Title
Catalogus variorum & insignium librorum … bibliothecae … Lazari Seaman.
Coverage
London
Publisher
E. Brewster & W. Cooper
Date
1676
Description
The first English book auction catalogue. Auctions on the now-familiar “ascending-price” model were a recent import from the Netherlands, and the preface to this catalogue is both an introduction to and a sales-pitch for the new practice. Lazarus Seaman (d. 1675) was a Puritan divine and one-time master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, but he is remembered today primarily because of his connection with the first English book auction.
Source
Gift of the children of W. S. Davis, 1941.