A Romance of the Rostrum, Being the Business Life of Henry Stevens and the History of Thirty-eight King Street, together with Some Account of the Famous Sales Held There During the Last Hundred Years

First edition.  334pp, with tissue-guarded frontispiece and 12 further photographic illustrations. Blue cloth-covered boards, gilt lettering on spine.  8vo.  Cloth a little shelf worn, rubbed around spine and lightly so on corners, rounded and faded at spine ends, a few mild marks on verso.  Top text block edge dust dulled.  Bookplate on front paste down.  Tissue guard partially detached; one plate detached but present, else internally neat and clean.

A history of the once-famous Stevens Auction House of Covent Garden, London.  Founded by John Crace Stevens circa 1830, it remained in business until the outbreak of the second world war. Mainly concerned with the sale of natural history objects and those of zoological, ethnolgraphic and scientific interests, it held weekly and specialist sales. As a source of objects and information on scientific and ethnographical material it was a influential in shaping and meeting the interest of many Victorian gentlemen in the natural sciences; Lord Rothschild attests to be being one of those in his introduction to this now hard to find volume.