“Noble Fragments”
Book Review
“Noble Fragments” The gripping story of the Antiquarian Bookseller who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible” by Michael Visontay
Reviewed by Steven G. Kellman
At the entrance to exhibitions at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, a visitor encounters the institution’s crown jewel – a complete Gutenberg Bible. One of the rarest of bibliophilic treasures, it was printed in the 1450s and is one of only 20 surviving copies. The Gutenberg Bible is cherished not only because it was the first substantial book printed with movable metal type but also for the quality of the paper and the artistry of the lettering. The last time one of these gorgeous renditions of the Latin Vulgate went on the market, in 1978, the HRC snatched it up for a mere $2.4 million. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $11.6 million today.
To any lover of art, it would be unthinkable to cut up Vincent van Gogh’s “Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers” – which fetched $38.7 million at auction in 1987 – and sell each of the petals separately. Yet that is comparable to what an antiquarian book dealer named Gabriel Wells did in 1921 when he separated 643 leaves – singly or in clusters – of a Gutenberg Bible and put them up for sale at $150 per page. Mounting each leaf with accompanying commentary, he called them “Noble Fragments” and donated some to libraries and universities. Wells insisted that he would break up only a book that was incomplete. He saw the distribution of Noble Fragments as a way to democratize the love of rare books by making their pages more widely available.
Otto Ege, who proclaimed himself a biblioclast, a breaker of books, made a fortune selling parts of medieval volumes. The only dealer other than Wells to break up a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, Ege explained: “Surely to allow a thousand people ‘to have and to hold’ an original manuscript leaf, and to get the thrill and understanding that comes from actual and frequent contact with these art heritages, is justification enough for the scattering of fragments. Few, indeed, can hope to own a complete manuscript book; hundreds, however, may own a leaf.”
In Noble Fragments, Michael Visontay sets out to track down the fate of the Gutenberg leaves that Wells scattered throughout the world. Because trade in rare books is discreet and buyers often keep their acquisitions private, Visontay’s sleuthing comes up against many dead ends. In 2017, however, the audience for the reality TV show Pawn Stars watched a Noble Fragment of the Second Book of Chronicles change hands for $47,000. Within two years, the show’s host, Rick Harrison, resold it for $68,000.
The three leaves containing the Sermon on the Mount passed from one oligarchic dynasty to another; purchased by Edith Hallock du Pont, the widow of William Kemble du Pont, that Noble Fragment ended up in the possession of John Paul Getty’s grandson, Mark. Visontay traces the leaves of the Book of Joshua from New York to London to Geneva to Pennsylvania to New York to Schweinfurt, Germany. Among the many eccentric characters he comes across is David Karpeles, a real estate magnate who amassed one of the largest private collections and made it accessible in the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museums that he created in small towns throughout the United States.
However, Visontay’s interest in Noble Fragments is personal as well as intellectual. His grandfather’s second wife, Olga, was Wells’s niece, and, though she inherited 8 percent of her childless uncle’s fortune, it did not include any Gutenberg leaves. Nevertheless, Visontay seizes on the connection to make his book a quest for both Noble Fragments and the roots in Hungary of his own Jewish family, originally named Weiszmann. When the Nazis came to power, 26 members of his relatives were murdered, but both his grandfather, Pali, and his father, Ivan, survived excruciating ordeals in concentration camps. One of the most traumatic moments comes when adolescent Ivan sees his mother, Sara, lying amid a pile of other corpses in Auschwitz. Michael’s father, Ivan, Pali and Ivan later managed to elude Communist authorities and make their way to Australia, where Michael was born.
Noble Fragments becomes the triumphant story of survival – not only of an extraordinary book that is almost 600 years old but also of remnants of a people that even the ruthless Nazis could not expunge.
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Noble Fragments: The Gripping Story of the Antiquarian Bookseller Who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible, by Michael Visontay; Scribe; 2025; $22.00.