Samuel Sotheby (1771–1842) was an English auctioneer and antiquary.
Background
Samuel Sotheby's uncle,
John Sotheby
John Sotheby (1740 – 1 November 1807) was an English auctioneer, who is the eponym of the famous auction house Sotheby's.
Background
Auction house Baker and Leigh, was founded in London on 11 March 1744,
He was the nephew of Samuel Baker, who wa ...
(1740–1807), was partner and nephew of Samuel Baker, who founded at York Street,
Covent Garden, in 1744 the first English sale-exclusively for books, manuscripts, and prints. In 1774 Baker took George Leigh into partnership, and from 1775 to 1777 the firm was styled S. Baker & G. Leigh. After 1778, when Baker died, Leigh carried on the business alone, but from 1780 to 1800 John Sotheby (Baker's nephew) was associated with him, and the firm was known as Leigh & Sotheby.
Career
The firm became Leigh, Sotheby, & Son in 1800, when John Sotheby's nephew Samuel joined it, and so continued till 1803. After 1803, and until the death of Leigh in 1815, the firm carried on their business at a new address, 145 Strand. John Sotheby died in 1807, and on Leigh's death, eight years later, Samuel continued the concern by himself, moving to 3 Waterloo Street, Strand, about 1817. Soon afterwards he took his son
Samuel Leigh Sotheby into partnership, and in 1826 Messrs. Sotheby & Son printed a ''Catalogue of the Collections sold by Messrs. Baker, Leigh, & Sotheby from 1744 to 1826''.
Samuel Sotheby conducted the dispersal of many famous libraries. He retired from business in 1827. The firm
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
still exists.
Sotheby died at
Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
on 4 January 1842, in his seventy-first year.
Bibliophile
Sotheby was interested the history of printing. He began to trace facsimiles of early printed books in 1814. After a visit to the Netherlands in 1824 to examine specimens at
Haarlem for his friend
William Young Ottley, his attention was first specially directed to
block book
Block books or blockbooks, also called xylographica, are short books of up to 50 leaves, block printed in Europe in the second half of the 15th century as woodcuts with blocks carved to include both text (usually) and illustrations. The content ...
s. His collections were edited by his son as ''The Typography of the Fifteenth Century'', 1845, and ''Principia Typographica'', 1858, 3 vols.
Family
Sotheby first married, in 1803, Harriet Barton (1775–1808), by whom he had two sons and two daughters; the youngest son was Samuel Leigh Sotheby. His second wife was Laura Smith, married in 1817. She had no surviving children.
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sotheby, Samuel
1771 births
1842 deaths
English book and manuscript collectors
English auctioneers
Samuel 1771