The crowning glory of a collection of books formed in the 1960s and '70s by Carl-Berthel Nathhorst, a Swedish industrialist, was a 1554 first edition of the monumental Swedish history, Gothorum Sueonumque Historia, written by Johannes Magnus and edited and printed on a press established at the hospice of the Swedish St. Birgitta in Rome by his brother Olaus, whose own work on the Nordic peoples was printed there in 1555.
In a contemporary alla graeca armorial binding of tan morocco gilt, it was bound for the library established at Fontainebleau by one of the great bibliophiles of the 16th century and, to quote Howard Nixon, "the greatest collector of bookbindings of all times", Henri II of France. Over 800 books from his library survive in the Bibliothèque Nationale, but fewer than 30 are known elsewhere and very few indeed remain in private hands. This magnificent example was sold at King Street for £125,000.
