Library of Economist Michael Kuczynski to Auction

The core of Sworders’ online Books, Manuscripts and Maps sale running through November 1 comes from the library of Michael Kuczynski.

Kuczynski (1941-2025) was born in Peru to parents who had fled Germany in 1933, and worked as an economist in the IMF before working in academia at his alma mater, Pembroke College, Cambridge. Fluent in Spanish, English and French, Kuczynski's collecting interests were wideranging, and the sale certainly has a distinct French flavour, boasting some impressive plate books and histories from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece published in 1758 includes 60 elephant folio size plates. Written by the French architect, historian, and archaeologist Julien-David Le Roy who travelled to Greece in 1754–1755 to measure and sketch ancient sites, this work revealed to European eyes the wonders of Greek classical architecture. A first edition copy in a full leather binding, it has an estimate of £2,000-£3,000.

Also going under the hammer is a complete three-volume copy of Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece by Comte de Marie Gabriel Choiseul-Gouffier (estimate: £3,000-£5,000). The aristocratic French ambassador to the Ottoman empire in the decade before the revolution, he first visited Greece in 1776 and published the first volume of his Voyage in 1782. Fleeing France in 1789 for fear of the guillotine, he returned in 1802 and published the second volume in 1809 with a third published posthumously in 1822. The copy here is bound in contemporary full leather.

The French historian, georgrapher and economist Jean-Benoît Scherer published several books on the Russian empire, including his two-volume Annales de la Petite-Russie ou Histoire des Cosaques-Saporogues et des Cosaques de l’Ukraine ou de la Petite-Russie issued in 1788. This was one of the first Western Europe works on Ukrainian history and geography and includes the earliest discussion of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the feared military and political force from the southern Ukrainian steppes. A good copy of a very rare work (estimate: £800-£1,200).

The auction includes an influential book in the study of modern physiognomy - the practice of assessing character or personality from facial features - Essai sur la Physiognomonie, destiné a faire connaitre l'Homme by Swiss clergyman Jean Gaspard Lavater (1741-1801). Lavater’s theories were published across three volumes, complete with 145 engraved plates and numerous text engravings, with a fourth published in 1803. A large folio copy of the first three volumes is expected to bring £1,000-£1,500.

Michael Kuczynski spent close to half a century at the University of Cambridge, first as a student and then as a lecturer in economics until retirement.  His library included Ackermann's A History of the University of Cambridge, its Colleges, Halls, and Public Buildings, one of only 50 large paper copies with 96 plates published in 1815, plus the companion volume of Costume in the University of Cambridge with an additional 15 plates. Together they are estimated at £1,500-£2,500.

Kuczynski also maintained a connection with his native Peru where his elder brother Pedro Kuczynski was an economist and president 2016-18. He owned an early printing of Comentarios Reales de los Incas, the chronicles of Inca history, culture, and society by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616). The son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman born in the early years of the conquest, his book was the first literature by an author born in the Americas to enter the western canon. This copy, printed in Madrid in 1723, is guided at £600-£900.