Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Photo: Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post/Getty
You can tell a lot about a person based on what she keeps on her bookshelves.
“It’s a map, telling you about the person who put the library together. What were they interested in? What did they read? And you can always see connections, right? One book leads to another book which leads to yet another path of inquiry,” Catherine Williamson, a book specialist who runs auction house Bonhams' Fine Books and Manuscripts department, tells PEOPLE.
Bonhams is currently holding asale of more than 1,000 personal booksand other items like honorary degrees, albums that late Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburgkept at her Washington, D.C., apartment.
“They found institutional homes for a lot of her things,” Williamson says of the items, some of which also belonged to Ginsburg’s husband,Marty, who died in 2010. “The Supreme Court archives have a tremendous amount of her material. I know that they gave her piano to the National Opera … What we have are the books that were on the library shelves in the D.C. apartment after other things were dispersed to institutions.”
Catherine Williamson.Bonhams
When Williamson and her colleagues received the collection, she was pleased to find a few items one would expect a member of the high court to own.
“I was hoping I would find law books. I was hoping I would find books that were important in her career,” Williamson says.
Bonhams
During the process of preparing for the auction, Williamson, who was already an admirer of the justice, learned more about Ginsburg’s literary tastes.
Gloria Steinem’s memoir On the Road inscribed to Justice Ginsburg.Bonhams
Williamson’s favorite item in the collection is a copy ofGinsburg’s annotated copy of theHarvard Law Reviewfrom 1957 and 1958.
The current bid for the copy of Harvard Law Review is $5,500 with six days to go before the auction ends. But not all the items for sale are so pricey.
Justice Ginsburg’s annotated copy of the Harvard Law Review.Bonhams
“This is 100 percent an auction for everyone. It doesn’t cost anything to take a look. So you can certainly go to the Bonhams.com website and see every single lot, even lots that have multiple books in them — they’re 10 or 12 books — we’ve listed every single title,” Williamson says. “The price points are all incredibly low. I’ve noticed that some things are already being bid up a bit, but it is still an incredibly affordable option.”
The auction began Wednesday. Williamson says she is already pleased with the response, which began even before the sale launched.
“People were calling, emailing, asking, ‘How do I bid?’ But we’ve had a tremendous surge of people registering and leaving bids just in the first day,” she says. “That certainly bodes very well.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
For Williamson, who claims an encyclopedic knowledge of American manuscripts and says reading Jane Austen’sPride & Prejudicein college changed her life, the sale of Ginsburg’s collection of books has been one of her favorite projects in the 20 years she’s been in the business.
But for a “super fan” of the widely loved judge, the sale has “been a real delight,” Williamson says.
“It has been one of the most meaningful,” she says. “For me and for the other women who work with me, all of us who are so grateful for all of the change that she brought about that makes our lives better every day.”
source: people.com
