Item forms a comprehensive list of the British Museum, Department of Printed Books collection of catalogues of books sales and auctions held between 1676, the first time books were sold at aution in England, until the end of the ninteenth century.

volume is the first in a two-volume set which constitutes an edition of the sale catalogue of the private library of Rushton M. Dorman of Chicago, Illinois, a collection numbering 1842 separate items. The book demonstrates book-collecting and reading habits and interests among affluent late 19th-century Americans. In addition, the substance and tone of the comments set down by the original compiler of the catalogue display the marketing methods employed by a major late-19th-century book-auction firm.