JOHN KER, 3rd Duke of Roxburghe (1740-1804) had a library in St James's Square considered to be one of the finest in Europe. The prize of his collection was Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Christopher Valdarfer in Venice in 1471. When Roxburghe's library came up for auction in May 1812, there was intense excitement, the Valdarfer Decameron billed in the sales catalogue as the very holy grail of books: 'No other perfect copy is yet known to exist; after all, the fruitless researches of more than three hundred years.'
By the time it came under the hammer on June 17, the nation's bibliophiles were in a fever of anticipation. The auction did not disappoint, with the Decameron selling for a record £2,260 after a bidding war between 2nd Earl Spencer and the Marquess of Blandford. It remained the most expensive book sold at auction anywhere in the world until 1873.
That evening, a group of 18 self-confessed 'bibliomaniacs' met for a celebratory dinner, brought together by the enthusiasm of the Revd Thomas Dibdin, an impecunious bibliographer with a romantic, rather than strictly scholarly love of books and a knack for cultivating aristocratic collectors. Amid much drinking, toasting and good cheer-and with Dibdin's patron Earl Spencer presiding, despite having lost his bid the book lovers resolved to commemorate the sale as an annual event and thus the Roxburghe Club was born.
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