How rare is a Handel 1st?

Sotheby’s are selling a very scarce first edition next week of Handel’s Giulio Cesare.

[Giulio Cesare] Julius Caesar: an Opera. Compos’d by G. Frederick Handel, of London, Gent., London: Cluer, [1724]

FIRST EDITION, [6], 118 pages, 8vo (21.3 x 13.1cm), illustrated engraved title-page, printed privilege, engraved index, some modern pencil annotations to front pastedown, bookseller’s label to front free endpaper (“[H]arold Reeves…”), eighteenth-century calf, rebacked, a few tiny tears to laid-down title, browning and spotting to title, p.2 pagination cropped, a few pages trimmed to plate, tiny tear to lower margin of pp.105/106 and 111/112, last leaf slightly loose, corners restored, some wear to covers

VERY RARE. This is only the third copy offered for sale in these rooms in the last sixty years.

The estimate is just £5,000 to £7,000. Tempted?

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