Number of Copies

January 1, 2019

Coming up with the number of copies of the Aurora Australis that exist today is not as easy a task as it might seem.

The challenge is to determine which copy is which. They were not numbered leaving inscriptions and stenciling as the main ways of identifying unique copies; secondarily useful: the title page and text variants.

The census of copies has been divided into two main sections: Group A—copies that are in institutions and government holdings; and Group B—copies that are owned by individuals.

At the moment—January 2019—Group A accounts for 43 copies, all confirmed. It’s conceivable that one or two copies in this group have been deaccessioned since being recorded and confirmed but this is quite unlikely. So we can say with confidence at the start that 43 copies definitely exist.

At the moment—January 2019—Group B accounts for 30 copies, all but one confirmed. That one (#114) is a curious one which may have never existed (see the entry under “Details by copy”). Of the remaining 29, four copies (#119-121, 125) definitely existed and were in private hands some years ago but may have since been sold or otherwise transferred, lost, destroyed, etc. So at least 25 copies definitely exist and are presently in private hands.

The remaining groups—C, D, E—total 99. Quite a number of these, those in Group E in particular, are included more than once. These are copies that have transferred ownership one, two, three or more times. When a copy in Group B (private ownership) sells at auction and it’s not known who bought it (institution? collector?) it is put into or remains in Group E. (The most recent example is the Fossett copy that sold at Leslie Hindman in Chicago on October 31, 2018. Steve Fossett was a collector but it is not yet known who bought it: a collector or an institution. So for the moment it remains in Group E.)

Those in Group C are all copies discovered by John Millard many years ago. (He has since died and his census records have never been found so the identification of the owners can only be guessed.) Some that were once in this “anonymous group” have been identified and transferred to other groups (A, B and E). Almost without question some of the 14 copies in Group C, already exist, under a different name and number, in Groups A or B. But some could be copies not yet confirmed.

Group D includes copies that have been known to exist at one time or have been rumored to exist but whose existence has not been confirmed or, if it has, the present location is not known. This group now numbers seven. Four have been transferred to Groups A or B.

Of the seven, four have definitely been confirmed as having existed at least at some time in the past. All four could have since been transferred or sold, privately or at auction, and now appear in Groups A, B or, most likely, E.

So to be on the safe side in estimating the number of copies that have been confirmed, it is best to exclude these from consideration.

At this point we now have 68 confirmed copies (43 in Group A and 25 in Group B)

Moving on to Group E. This is where we can pick up quite a few copies which we know exist but that we don’t know whether they reside in Group A or Group B. As a result, they remain in Group E.

The following copies are known to exist and it is reasonably certain that they still are in the possession of the purchaser or at least if they have been sold their new owners/locations have yet to come to light (and thus continue to be assigned to Group E):

Arranged chronologically according to sale or appearance:

276. Fright copy. Sold Sotheby’s June 22, 1995.

277. Frank Wild copy. Sold Christie’s October 25, 1995.

256. Biscuit copy. Sold Christie’s September 27, 1996.

257. Priester copy. Sold High Latitude. September 30, 1996.

258. Shaughnessy copy. Sold Christie’s September 26, 1997.

297. Perris copy. Sold Christie’s April 18, 2000.

262. Emily Shackleton copy. Sold Christie’s September 25, 2001.

263. Cecily Shackleton copy. Sold Christie’s September 25, 2001.

265. Murchison copy. Sold Christie’s September 25, 2002.

271. Levinson copy. Sold Swann Sold May 24, 2007.

272. Eames copy. Sold Bonhams June 26, 2007.

321. Antipodean copy. Offered at Boston Bookfair November 2008.

323. Züst copy. Offered at the California Bookfair February 2015.

322. Maggs copy. Offered at the NY Bookfair April 2015.

324. Stancomb-Wells copy. Offered at the London Bookfair May 2015.

315. Brooke-Hitching copy. Sold Sotheby’s September 30, 2015.

316. Petit Pois copy. Sold Sotheby’s April 28, 2016. (The other 2 PETIT POIS copies are in institutional ownership and not likely to have been deaccessioned.)

317. Dunlop dummy copy. Sold Bonhams February 1, 2017.

318. Dunlop Giant Tick copy. Sold Bonhams February 1, 2017.

320. Fossett copy. Sold Hindman October 31, 2018.

There are at least 20 copies in Group E that don’t appear in Groups A or B and apparently haven’t reappeared at auction. If this is accurate, then the total number of copies known to exist is 88 (68 plus 20).