Gutenberg Bibles are rare as the printings of William Caxton, the first Englishman to set his language in movable type. Both are as common as telephone books compared to a handwritten Caxton manuscript. When the Englishman's 15th century translation of the first nine books of the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, a series of moralizing fables, was sold at auction in London's Sotheby's (TIME, July 8), the illustrated gem fetched $252,000a record high for any book ever sold to the public. A New York dealer bought it, and the 272-page manuscript seemed destined to remain forever separate from...
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