Auctiva Emporium: robsbook

   A.S.W. Rosenbach was a famous collector of rare books and an early champion of American literature, especially noted as a collector of Melville. He helped assemble the extensive collections of the Huntington Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library. He incurred the wrath of none other than the writer James Joyce when he had the temerity to purchase at auction Joyce's manuscript for Ulysses and refused to sell it back, Joyce responded by writing a small poem in his honor;

      Rosy Brook he bought a book

    Though he didn't know how to spell it.

      Such is the lure of literature

    To the lad who can buy and sell it.

   It turned out in the end that James Joyce was not angered so much by the fact that A.S.W. Rosenbach bought the manuscript but that he paid so little for it. The purchase price was $1975.00. Rosenbach's home was converted to the Rosenbach Museum & Library in 1954 to help preserve his personal collection of rare books, and there the manuscript for Ulysses still resides.