What can the interior of the house tell us about the library? Nothing, for there is no physical evidence of a library in any of the rooms. A library is, though, mentioned in the 1873 estate sale catalogue, for it states that a particular room could be used as a library or ballroom, that room is now referred to as the ballroom.

We are very lucky that an auction catalogue was printed and distributed and that it is available online, which is where I first discovered the catalogue and learnt of the library. Without that catalogue, we would only know of about 1% of the library’s contents through mentions in books, newspaper and articles and through the provenance of a few of the books, which Henry had owned and are now in various libraries, such as the British Library, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and the Morgan Library, New York.

The catalogue describes Henry Perkins’ library as ‘valuable, important, and great’; it certainly was, for Henry’s library included ‘illuminated manuscripts, (earliest date being two fragments from the 9th century) ancient bibles, [earliest]examples of printing on vellum [in Europe], the four folios of Shakespeare and important county histories’. The Perkins Library, according to the Daily Telegraph, 1873:

            ‘Has long been famous in Europe as the finest private collection that has ever been amassed by an English bibliophile. No man knew more about books than he, no man loved them more for their sake and for their contents.’

The sale, held in the library at Hanworth, was over four days, commencing on Tuesday 3rd June, 1873 at 1 o’clock. The library was open for inspection by special appointment and on the three days prior to the auction.

The final total raised at the auction was £25, 594.45, the relative value today being in excess of £2,000,000.00. Various of the books have increased so much in value that today they are classed as priceless. Perkins Library included Shakespeare’s four folios, offered for sale in March 2023 at an asking price of £8.76 million

The catalogue consists of 99 pages, with 865 lots. Each lot being one or more titles, each title may be one or more volumes. In total there are approx. 1,466 separate titles - totalling approx. 5,596 separate volumes e.g.:

Lot 1 is a single title of eighteen volumes

Lot 2 a single title of eighty volumes

Lot 3 is four separate titles with a total of fifteen volumes.

I have entered the separate titles into a spreadsheet and attached the Dewey Catalogue reference for each title -  available on request for a small fee.

Were they a collection of books only collected for their beauty and rarity? No, because both Henry and Algernon were well educated, had enquiring minds and were active members of society, and both belonged to various societies, organisations and charities and had amassed an amazing collection of reference books on many subjects: archaeology, angling, astronomy, bees, birds (British, European, Himalayan, Australian, American.), brewing, chemistry, chess, classics, drama, dictionaries, dogs, encyclopaedias, explorers, falconry,  farm insect, fiction, geography, history, horsemanship, mechanics,  music scores, natural history, navigation, physics, poetry,  religion, seamanship, theatre, travel, trees, veterinary medicine.

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For your delectation, I have chosen a few incunabula, and a few reference books post 1500. [Incunabula: a term for books which pre date 1500.] I have contacted various experts for their opinions on the following:

Lot 174 Auction catalogue description for Biblia Sacra Latina:

Manuscript on vellum of the 13th Century, in double columns, in a bold Gothic character and embellished with 146 miniture paintings. 2 very thick volumes. These noble columns, forming a most magnificent manuscript of the Latin scriptures, consist of 745 leaves. Measuring 17 ½ by 13.

On the margins of the first leaf as also on that of Genesis, are elaborately painted borders representing the creation, the expulsion from paradise and the deity blessing the church. These illuminations, of the period of Giotto, are of very high order, and the rarity of Italian manuscripts of this date is well known.

Library of Congress: Biblia Sacra Latina  - Neksei-Lipozc Bible Hungarian Bible 1335-1340                      

I had found a reference in the online catalogue of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC., which states they have a bible that was once part of Henry and Algernon Perkins’ library. I was not sure to which of the many bibles they were referring. One our fellow history researchers, working at The National Archives, Kew very kindly asked her contact at the Library of Congress if they could help identify the bible. She received a very informative reply from the Curator of the Lessing G Rosenwald Collection and the Reference Assistant of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division – it was Lot 174

The British Library website states their copy is:

Lot 534 and is a Book of Hours.

Book of Hours are collections of prayers and devotional texts designed to be used by non-clerics. The prayers were to be recited daily at eight set hours in the day to Mary. More Book of Hours were made in that period than any other type of book, many survive today in libraries and museums.

The calendar includes 12 miniatures of the labours of the months and full borders with suns with rays in gold at the outer corners. Text throughout formed in gold , with decoration in colours, surrounded by rinceau borders incorporating hybrid creatures, birds, insects and flowers in colours with gold.

The artist, the Master of the Brussels initials has been identified with Giovanni de Fra’Silvestro, an illuminator for the CONFRATERNITA DI SANTA MARIA DELLA MORTE, Bolologna.

It was bought at the auction by the British Museum for £400.00

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Lots 864 and 865 Gutenberg Bibles, 1455  

The Perkins library contained two copies of the Gutenberg Bible: one on vellum and one on paper. 

The penultimate lot, Lot 864,  was a Gutenberg Bible on vellum, formerly known as the Mazarine Bible. At the auction it was sold to Mr Ellis (a book seller) for £3,400.00. The final lot, Lot 865, a Gutenberg Bible on paper, was sold to Mr Quaritch, a book seller, for £2,690.00. 

July 2022, a single leaf (page) from a Gutenberg Bible sold for £50,600, experts suggest a complete bible is worth over £25 million.  

British Library: 

'Johann Gutenberg’s Bible is probably the most famous Bible in the world. 

It is the earliest full-scale work printed in Europe using moveable type.  

Gutenberg’s invention allowed the mass production of books for the first time and changed the world. Before Gutenberg, every book (outside of Asia where some printed books had been produced much earlier) had to be copied by hand. The Gutenberg Bible was printed in Mainz in 1455 by Johann Gutenberg and his associates, Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer. Only 48 copies are known to have survived, of which 12 are printed on vellum and 36 on paper. Twenty are complete, two of them at the British Library, one printed on paper (shelfmark C.9.d.3,4.) and one printed on vellum (shelfmark G.12226-7). Printing was one of the most important technical advances in history.'

Lot 864 Auction catalogue description:

First edition of the holy scriptures, and the first Book executed with metal types by the inventors of the art of printing. A most splendid and magnificent copy, printed upon vellum, with the capitals artistically illuminated in gold and colours. This edition is generally known by the name of the Mazarine Bible, from the first discovery of a copy in the Library of Cardinal Mazarin. It is printed in double columns, in imitation of the large letters employed by the Scribes in the Church Missals and Choir Books.

In contemplating this work, the mind is lost in astonishment that the inventors of printing should by a single effort have exhibited the perfection of their art. This  MAGNIFICENT COPY formerly constituted the chief ornament and glory of the Library of the University of Mentz.

It is moreover believed to be THE FINEST of the few known copies, whether for amplitude of margin, or purity of the vellum, it being as clean as the day it issued from the press. 

It is unquestionably the most important and distinguished article in the WHOLE ANNALS of TYPOGRAPHY.

Lot 865 Auction catalogue description: The final lot Gutenberg Bible on paper:

A matchless copy of the same important work printed on paper. It is unquestionably the first time, as it may with almost absolute certainty be said that it will be the last, that two copies of this book are sold in one day. It may be remarked that Royalty itself was obliged to be content with a paper copy, for the Duke of Sussex could never obtain any other, and his copy was in every respect very inferior to this. 

Perkins copies of Gutenberg Bibles at the Morgan Library, New York and the Huntington Library, California.

There is a difference of opinion as to the provenance of the vellum copy.

I had found 2 articles, which state that the Perkins paper copy is in the Morgan Library, Madison Avenue, New York and the Perkins vellum copy is in the Huntington Library, San Mario, California. I contacted both libraries. 

From the Assistant Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Morgan Library:

He explained that the term “Mazarin” has now fallen out of use.[Lot 864, above, was historically referred to as the Mazarin Bible.]

That the Perkins collection of incunabula is quite well known, that they do have the Perkins paper copy, Lot 865, and the Huntington have the Perkins vellum copy, Lot 864.
He referred me to Eric White’s work on the printing history of all known copies of the Gutenberg Bible.  

I then received an email Huntington Library: they do not have the Perkins copy. 

Eric White,  Curator of Rare Books, Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton, New Jersey, author of 'Incunabula on the move: The Production, Circulation and Collection of Early Printed Books, GUTENBERG BIBLES ON THE MOVE IN ENGLAND, 1789–1834', informed me:

'The Morgan Library has lot 865, the paper copy, which Perkins purchased in the 1824 M.M. Sykes sale. The Huntington Library has lot 864, the vellum copy in an original binding, found in Prague in 1813 and purchased by Perkins at the Nicol sale in 1825.  

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Lot 447, Layard A.H., Nineveh and Its Remains,(1849), (2 vols), Nineveh and Babylon, 1853.) Sold at the auction for £2.00

Who was Layard A.H? (I should have known!) For there is not a description of the books in the catalogue, and I was attracted to the names Nineveh and Babylon. 

Sir Austen Henry Layard Layard 1817 – 1894, was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Nineveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs and in 1851 the library of Ashurbanipal.

During his expeditions, often in circumstances of great difficulty, Layard despatched to England the splendid specimens which now form the greater part of the collection of Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum. For example: huge winged lions and bulls, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. These created a sensation in Britain in the late 1840s.

At nearby Nineveh, excavated during a second British Museum-funded expedition in 1849-1851, he dug two miles (3 km) of bas-reliefs and cleared seventy rooms in the palace of Sennacherib.

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Angling

Henry and Algernon had over 30 books on angling in their library – I thought that was rather a lot – until researching the lives of the Perkins at Hanworth and discovered why they had so many angling books: Henry was a founder member of the Thames Angling Preservation Society, [TAPS], in 1838 at the Bell Inn, Hampton; the Bell Inn is still there.

Lots 19-49:

Angler’s Souvenir, plates, half morocco, 1835

Shipley on Fly Fishing, &c half morocco, 1838

Carroll’s Angler’s Vade Mecum, coloured plates, half morocco, Edin., 1818

Handbook of Angling, by Ephemera, woodcuts, half morocco 1847

On the Right of Angling in the Thames, calf n.d.   

Aquatic Rights calf, 1811

Conservancy and Fish of the Thames, calf extra, 1746

Angler’s Rambles, calf extra,1836

Angler’s Guide,  plates, calf extra [Sold for £1,125?] 1825

Consolations in Travel, half morocco, 1830

Art of Angling, 1804

Maxims for an Angler, and Miseries of Fishing, plates, 1839

Rod and the Line, coloured plates, half red morocco, 1849

Salmonia, woodcuts, 1828

Compleat Fisherman, curious plate, 1724

Angling in Scotland, half morocco, 1836

Flyfisher’s Text Book, half calf, 0

True Enjoyment of Angling, LARGE PAPER (100 only printed) half morocco, 1843

British Angler’s Manual, LARGE PAPER, INDIA PROOFS, half morocco, 1839

A treatise on the management of fresh-water fish, half calf, 1841

Angler’s Guide, woodcuts, half morocco, 1841

Jolly Angler, 80 cuts, 1831

Trout and Salmon Fishing in Wales, 1834

Angling Reminiscences, plates, 1837

Scenes and Recollections of Fly-fishing, half morocco, 1834

Angler in Wales, plates, half calf, extra, 1834

Fly-fisher’s Entomology, coloured plates, half morocco, 1839

Fly-fisher’s Guide, coloured plates, 1828

The Complete Angler, plates, calf extra, gilt edges, 1760

Angling in All its Branches, half calf, 1800

The Art of Angling, calf, 1792

Since its formation, Thames Angling Preservation Society [TAPS] has received many compliments, such as Charles Dickens (Jnr), in his Dictionary of London and the TAPS, in 1906, looking back at their past.

A more recent compliment in 2011 was paid-during an evening at the Bell Inn, Hampton, by The Thames Anglers’ Conservancy,

‘.. we will be honouring our forefathers, the TAPS, who first met at this venue 174 years ago today.’. 

An email to Keith Elliott, Editor of Classic Angling, author, (Keith wrote a weekly angling column in The Independent for 23 years) - produced a very informative reply:

‘This is a very good angling library that contains many of the works considered to be angling classics.

The best known: Izaak Walton’s ‘The Compleat Angler’ - has gone into more editions (500 at the last count) than any other book in literature except the bible – The 1760, part of Lot 15,  8th edition  - was edited by Sir John Hawkin. It came into competition with the 7th ed published a year earlier and gave rise to: ‘sundry skirmishes and passages of arms between the two editors’.

Lot 198 Richard Blome’s book published in 1686 ‘The Gentleman’s Recreation’. Blome said he collected all the authors of the day on various subjects and ‘methodically digested the whole into an entire body’; taking over four years. Copy sold at Christies in 2008 for £2,750.00.[i]

Part of Lot 9 the Roger Griffiths work is the earliest he knows specifically on the Thames.

Lot 11: James Saunders book, ‘The Compleat Fisherman ’is notable among fishing bibliophiles as being the first by an angling author to mention the use of silkworm gut for tying hooks because of its strength.’

I then chose part of Lot 10 Penn’s Maxims for an Angler, and Miseries of Fishing, as it has such an interesting title – here is one of Penn’s observations:

‘Arriving just before sunset at a shallow, where the fish are rising beautifully, and finding that they are all about to be immediately driven away by five-and-twenty cows, which are preparing to walk very leisurely across the river in open fields.’

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And now we come to the final item – which is my favourite - so far.

Lots 297, 298 and 600. Humboldt et Bonpland

Catalogue description for lot 600:

This is the most expensive, and perhaps the most magnificent work, which has ever issued from the press. The plates are splendidly executed on a very extensive scale, and form a grand and brilliant illustration of the scenery buildings, zoology and botany of New Spain.

Who was Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander VON Humboldt?

He was a polymath, geographer, naturalist and explorer, who between 1799 and 1804, travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He drew everything from llamas and penguins to tents and pulley systems.

His companion was Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland, a French explorer and botanist. He co-authored volumes of the scientific results of their expedition.

On scientific illustrations, Humboldt wrote:  ‘they should speak to the senses without fatiguing the mind.’ His famous illustration of Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador shows plant species living at different elevations.

You may have heard of the Humboldt Penguin, but there are more things named after Humboldt than anyone else who ever lived: an ocean current on the west of South America, monuments, parks, rivers, geyser, bay, waterfalls, counties, lakes, a squid and a major glacier in Greenland, whose front is 68 miles wide; although it has lost 200 square kilometres of area since 1982, mostly lost since 2000.

Wulf has studied Humboldt for ten years; in her works and lectures on Humboldt, she sets out to restore Humboldt to his rightful place in the pantheon of natural scientists. I asked Andrea Wulf her opinion of Humboldt’s work in the Perkins Library.

In Andrea’s email to me she stated:

“This is a very fine collection of Humboldt’s work and an indication of a very wealthy and discerning owner.

Veu Des Cordilliers is insanely beautiful and was ridiculously expensive as are the atlases, botanical and zoological publications, not even Humboldt owned all of his books because they were so expensive.

This is an incredibly fine collection of Humboldt’s books. The owner [Perkins] must have been an avid natural history fan.”

From Andrea Wulf’s book ‘The Invention of Nature’

‘Humboldt revolutionized the way we see the world, he invented the web of life, the concept of nature as we know of it today. Separate disciplines were emerging such as botany, zoology, geology and chemistry, but had ignored the global view that would later become Humboldt’s hallmark. 

Humboldt wrote of the earth’s magnetic field decreasing closer to the equator and of his discovery of the magnetic equator 7o degrees and 500 miles south of the geographic equator. [Antarctic explorers such as Scott, mention Humboldt’s work on magnetic fields]

Darwin wrote, that had he not read Humboldt he would not have boarded The Beagle, nor conceived of the ‘Origin of Species’. Wulf has seen Darwin’s copies of Humboldt’s books (which Darwin kept on a shelf next to his hammock on The Beagle 1831-1836), filled with Darwin’s pencil remarks.’