Lost, Burned and Recovered: Tracing the Provenance History of a Copy of Caxton’s Golden Legend in the John Rylands Library

Abstract

Abstract On 29 June 1865, a fire at Sotheby’s in London destroyed extensive libraries prior to their sales. Among them was a copy of William Caxton’s Golden Legend owned by George Offor. This article demonstrates that this copy, hitherto believed to be lost, managed to survive the fire and now is Incunable Collection R4591 in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester. Further evidence confirms that before it was put on sale, Offor used it as ‘a hospital copy’ in order to ‘sophisticate’ other copies of the Golden Legend. This article also argues that prior to Offor’s ownership the copy was in the hands of a publisher and bookseller William Pickering, and he too removed several leaves from it and repurposed them. By filling the gap in the provenance history of this copy, this article throws further light on the antiquarian book trade in the nineteenth century.