Catalogue Entry: THEM00129
Draft fragment of 'Paradoxical Questions concerning Athanasius'
Custodial History
Sold at auction by Butterfields of Los Angeles on 10 May 2001 as Lot 3089 to an unknown buyer for $18,800 US.
Although the original document constituted part of a single coherent paragraph, incomplete at both ends, it was subsequently cut into four. The cuts do at least follow the angle of Newton's lines so as not to bifurcate them or any of the marginal notes. The mutilated portions are here designated fragments A-D, A being the top quarter (approximately) and D the bottom quarter of the original.
Fragment A was sold for $5,750 as Lot 179 at the PBA Galleries Sale 303, Los Angeles, 24 February 2005.
Fragment B was offered as Lot 292 by Bloomsbury in London on 15 May 2008 for an estimate of £6,000-£8,000 but not sold. It then appeared online as R.R. Auction Item 254 in October 2009 and was sold to an unknown buyer for $9,777 US.
Fragment C had been offered online by Buddenbrooks of Boston by May 2007 for $12,500 US, and subsequently by Abebooks for $13,500, but was unsold as of July 2010.
Fragment D (the bottom quarter of the original) was offered as Lot 59 at the PBA Galleries Sale 252, Los Angeles, 17 November 2002 for an estimated $15,000-$20,000 US but not sold.
Sotheby Lot
Part of SL266?Notes
Most if not all of SL266 is now in the Clark Library, Los Angeles, but if this document was not originally part of it it is clearly closely related.
Related Material
Facsimile and partial transcription on p. 26 of the Butterfields sale catalogue, which states the document is post-1705, but without any supporting evidence.
Cf. Clark Library, Los Angeles, Ms. **N563M3 P222 and Keynes Ms. 10, King's College, Cambridge.
