[Frank Marcham, English bookseller.] Autograph manuscript discussing his 'collection of catalogues' and 'the "Knock-out" system' (i.e. the ringing of auctions), with reference to Bernard Quaritch and Sotheby's.

15pp., 8vo. On twelve leaves torn from an album. With minor emendations, and an essay in another hand on some reverses. Unpublished. The piece begins: 'My collection of catalogues has grown much in the same way as other collections of books. At times I have got rid of many I missed later on and it was only by long experience I found that some things are desirable. First it is better to have each sale bound by itself and this I have carried out except where some association in an existing bound volume would have been destroyed. Much attention has always been paid to prices but the names of the buyers are more important and it is here that difficulties arise.' A little later comes the following interesting reference to the practice of ringing auction: 'The names and prices [in a catalogue] are of interest for some inquiry into the "Knock-out" system. Sometimes we find a sale with uniformly low prices yet this may happen from a variety of causes. There may have been an excellent sale held at some outlying spot that attracted all the London booksellers, or the sale may have been a trade property. How ancient the "knock out" is may be a moot point but I am inclined to think it as old as auctions.' Responding to a quotation from Hazlitt's 'Confessions of a Collector' he writes 'However Tom Hodge [senior partner at Sotheby's] did know [about the "knock out"] because it is fairly well known that his firm gave special facilities to Quaritch on condition that he did not join a knock out in their rooms, an arrangement the firm loyally carried out. All other places of sale were subject to the knock out with various members of the trade not all. Some firms were always outside it'. Later he states that he was 'present at one sale where a "written in" lot was sold for £5. It made considerably more in the "knock out" as it consisted of the National Collection / Smith for his History of New York (Now in the N[ew] Y[ork] P[ublic] L[ibrary].'Towards the end of the piece is the following extraordinary assertion: 'It has been customary for long enough for cataloguers employed by auctioneers to take some of the books and sell for themselves. It is an open secret that Sotheby's paid John Pearson 6d a lot for cataloguing fine libraries & he had "souvenirs" from every one. I allude to one such book in my notes on "Lopez the Jew" p 14 where a book in the possession of the rev Walter Begley whose library was sold by Sotheby's appeared in the sale of Pearson in the same rooms. Hazlitt [...] was aware of the practice [...] This reminds me that another of Sotheby's cataloguers was in the habit of putting his finds into Putticks I have been informed that one of the books from the Sneyd library travelled this road. Sometimes the auctioneers themselves retain items that they have no legal right to.' (Contrast this with the statement in the 1961 Shakespeare Head edition of the 'Works of Michael Drayton', that a book from the 1925 Britwell sale was 'stolen at Sotheby's before cataloguing, probably by Frank Marcham, a bookseller now deceased, stripped of its blue morocco binding by Lewis, and rebound in modern calf'.) Another anecdote relates to Christie's auction house: 'With regard to Christie's catalogues it was in 1927 or thereabouts that I saw Mr McKenna (then a partner at Christies) & asked him if the firm would transfer their duplicate or clerks' priced set of catalogues to the British Museum. After some discussion it was agreed that Christie's would, if the Br M desired them. When I communicated this to Alfred W Pollard then Keeper of the Br M he refused [last word underlined three times] the offer, but he did say that South Kensington was a more suitable place | Some years later I was told that the set was at South Kensington but Mr Pollard did not so inform me in fact I heard nothing more. At that time I could have paid £21.000 for the set and sold it at a profit in the United States but English civil servants would not believe that even if it were proved to them (and they cannot be discharged).' The rest of the essay is an attack on Pollard and his 'List of Catalogues of English Book Sales 1676-1900 now in the British Museum' (1915). From the Frank Marcham archive