Title
Catalogue d’une très-riche mais peu nombreuse collection de livres … dont le vente se fera à Binche, le 10 août 1840. [2nd issue].
Coverage
Mons
Publisher
E. Hoyois
Date
[1840]
Description
In the summer of 1840 a catalogue was issued advertising the sale by auction of the small but choice library of Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, comte de Fortsas, who had died the previous year. Sent to most of the leading book collectors of Europe, the meager sixteen-page sale catalogue caused an immediate sensation, for each of the fifty-two volumes described was absolutely unique, and violently desirable. On the sale date of August 10 collectors from all over Europe descended on the tiny Belgian town of Binche, but they found no sale, no jewel-like collection of incredibly rare books, not even a comte de Fortsas. The hoax was the brainchild of local antiquarian R. H. Ghislain Chalon, whose passion was playing elaborate pranks on intellectuals.
Source
Gift of Leonard Mackall, 1928.