In the preface to the first volume of the Robert Hoe auction catalogues, Beverly Chew wrote of his late friend and fellow collector, "Possessed of ample means, with knowledge and the true bookman's taste, this library he has brought together is, beyond all question, the finest this country has ever contained, and its final dispersion by auction the greatest of book sales." In his fifty years of collecting Hoe created a library of some thirty thousand volumes that included the finest examples of illuminated manuscripts and printing, from a twelfth-century copy of the Venerable Bede's Commentaries and Johannes Gutenberg's Bible on vellum (Mainz, 1450-1454) to William Morris's 1896 Kelmscott Press Chaucer, the greatest production of one of the greatest private presses. Hoe also assembled the landmarks of literature, from the first printed edition of Homer (Florence: Nerlii, 1488) and Shakespeare's First Folio (London: Printed by Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount...