Jefferson Muses on Book Collecting

"Books as well as other things have limits to their value beyond which we would not go," Thomas Jefferson wrote to his bookseller in a letter from Monticello dated April 11, 1819. In this letter, the former president references a booksellers' catalogue he has just received and asks to purchase Scapula's Lexicon (1616). I somehow missed this letter, sold for $13,750 at Bonhams San Francisco last week, but our eagle-eyed auction columnist Ian McKay pointed it out. A true bibliophile's delight.