The most expensive books in the world

JK Rowling’s first book since the conclusion of the Harry Potter series fetched a huge chunk of change. Published in December 2007, Beedle was the complete book of fairy tales that play a crucial role in the final instalment of the Harry Potter series. JK Rowling produced seven separate handwritten copies of Beedle, filled with illustrations she herself had drawn. These books were incredibly beautiful: leather-bound, with silver and moonstones decorating the cover. Rowling gave six of these ‘Moonstone Editions’ to friends and people who worked on the Harry Potter books, but one went up for auction on Amazon. One mega-fan paid US$3.98 million for it, and Rowling donated the proceeds to a children’s charity. While far from the most expensive book on this list, Beedle was the priciest book ever purchased that was written and published in the twenty-first century.

The title of this eighteenth-century French handbook translates to Treatise of Fruit Trees. The book was written by botanist Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau and contained five separate volumes filled with detailed illustrations. This manuscript went for €3.4 million (about AU$5.2 million) at a 2006 auction. Yes, someone spent over five million dollars for a book about fruit trees.

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This was the first-ever edition of the ‘Good Book’ to be produced using moveable-type print, with Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press (hence the name). Despite being mass-produced, the Gutenberg Bible is still incredibly rare and valuable, as its AU$8.4 million price tag makes clear. Only 48 copies of the original 1450s-printed batch remain today. The buyer of this copy was Maruzen Co. Ltd., a major Japanese bookseller. At the time, 1987, it set the record for the most expensive book ever purchased.

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This collection of William Shakespeare’s plays is widely considered one of the most significant treasures in literary history. Formally titled Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, the folio contains all but four of the Bard’s dramatic works. Of the 750 copies originally published seven years after his death in 1623, only 228 remain. Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, snatched one up at Christie’s, an auction house in New York City, in 2001. It cost him a cool AU$9.6 million.

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This enduring collection of stories from the middle ages by fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer fetched a hefty sum of money in 1998 – AU$11.67 million, to be exact. The 17,000 lines of The Canterbury Tales tell the story of a motley crew of pilgrims who engage in a storytelling contest while on their way to visit a holy shrine. Only 12 original copies still exist today. One ended up in the hands of London book dealers, who purchased it for GP£4.6 million (AU$8.1 million). In 1998, that amount was equal to about US$5.5 million. If you do the math (there are 24 separate tales), that’s approximately US$230,000 per tale.

Between 1827 and 1838, naturalist John James Audubon published a series of exquisite prints depicting hundreds of different North American bird species. Together, the 435 illustrations form the complete first edition of Birds of America, of which there are only 119 remaining copies. Another reason for the bird book’s massive value is the fact that six of the bird species depicted are now extinct. In 2010, the most expensive copy of Birds of America went for US$11.5 million at Sotheby’s Auction House in London. Two other copies of the book also raked in big money in the twentieth century: an US$8.8 million copy in 2000 and a US$7.9 million copy in 2012.

Only just beating out the birds in this list of expensive books is a lion… Henry the Lion, to be exact. Henry the Lion was the Duke of Saxony from 1142 to 1180 (Saxony, in case you were wondering, is a German state). He commissioned the production of a gospel book for display on the altar of Brunswick Cathedral. The text was a masterpiece, 266 pages long with 50 Romanesque illustrations depicting scenes from all four gospels. The book ended up back in the hands of the German government around 800 years later when it was purchased at a 1983 London auction for US$11.7 million. Today, the complete manuscript has a home in Wolfenbüttel, Germany’s Herzog August Library. To ensure its safety, it is only put on display once every two years!

These are some pricey prayers: this Flemish collection of Christian texts, psalms, and images cost its buyer US$13.4 million. It was compiled in the early 1500s and features the works of a myriad of Flemish scholars, which fill 254 separate pages. In 1999, Australian businessman Kerry Stokes purchased it from Christie’s in New York. Stokes loaned it to the National Library of Australia in Canberra, where it remains today.

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Religious texts continue to fill this list of expensive books, with the Bay Psalm Book continuing the trend. This one stands out from its fellows, though, because of its distinction as the first book ever printed in the British colonies that would become America. In 1640, 20 years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, the Bay Psalm Book emerged from printers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are approximately eleven copies still intact today, mostly in the possession of libraries and universities. One copy, though, has belonged to American businessman David Rubenstein since 2013, when he bought it at a Sotheby’s auction for US$14.2 million.

This pocket-sized version of the Gospel of John is one of the earliest surviving examples of Western bookbinding. Created in the eighth century, it spent years in the coffin of its namesake, St Cuthbert, before becoming the property of an English Jesuit school. In the years leading up to its 2012 purchase, it was on loan to the British Library. The book measures only 14 centimetres by nine centimetres inches. It may be small, but its price tag sure isn’t; the British Library raised over GB£9.5 million (AUD16.6 million) to buy it for good at an auction.