Sotheby’s First Book Sale

280 years ago today, fine art auctioneers, Sotheby’s, held its first book sale. This means I get to babble about both history and books—how exciting! I know, I’m a complete nerd, but I’m owning it!

International Auctioneers

Sotheby’s website says it is the oldest and largest internationally recognised firm of fine art auctioneers. The company’s first sale on 11^th March 1744 in London generated £826, but now Sotheby’s boasts a turnover of over $7 billion and a global network of 80 offices in 40 countries.

The company proudly labels itself as an innovator. A few firsts it claims include being the first international auction house when it opened offices in America in 1955, and the first to hold auctions in Asia in 1973. Sotheby’s established the ‘Evening Sale’ auction in 1958 and was the first to use satellite transmission which allowed simultaneous bidding across the Atlantic in the 1960s.

In the 1970s, Sotheby’s was the first auctioneer to sell the work of living artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, and in 2004, the first to sell a work for more than $100 million.

But enough about the company’s modern achievements. Let’s get to the history.

Sotheby’s was founded by Samuel Baker, a successful bookseller and entrepreneur. He was noted for being a jolly chap with a love for plum-coloured coats.
He held his first auction on 11^th March 1744. The sale took place in a building called The Exeter Exchange on the Strand in London, opposite what is now The Savoy Hotel. Later, The Exeter Exchange also housed a famous menagerie, but more on that in a future post.
The sale handled “several Hundred scarce and valuable Books in all branches of Polite Literature” from the library of Sir John Stanley and generated £826.
When Baker died in 1778, his estate was divided between his business partner, George Leigh, and his nephew, John Sotheby. The last Sotheby died in 1861, but the business continued under that name.
In its first hundred years, Sotheby’s handled the sales of the libraries of some of the most prestigious families in Britain, including those of the Earls of Sunderland, Hopetoun and Pembroke and the Dukes of Devonshire, York and Buckingham. In 1823, Sotheby’s even sold the books and personal items Napoleon had taken with him when exiled to St Helena. The last lot that day was Boney’s tortoiseshell-and-gold walking stick.
In 1917, the company moved its premises to Bond Street in Mayfair and expanded from book sales to art sales.

Under the Hammer

Some of the most famous literary sales held by Sotheby’s include the original autographed, hand-written manuscript of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (1928), the unpublished papers of Sir Isaac Newton (1936), the collection of Dr Martin Luther King Jr (2006), and a copy of the Magna Carta that sold for £21 million in 2007.

I wish my bank account could stretch to something like this, but unfortunately, I’ll have to stick to expanding my pre-loved book collection via charity shops.