February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — A 273-year-old first edition copy of Jonathan Swift’s literary classic "Gulliver’s Travels" was stolen in an armed robbery at the Armagh library in Northern Ireland.
Librarian Harry Carson said the work was "irreplaceable" and had been insured for £35,000.
The two volumes were a limited edition of about 20 copies and the Armagh set had notations on them written by Swift himself. They been bought for the library in 1847.
Carson believed the robbery was well planned as the two raiders had turned up posing as research students when a service was going on in the Church of Ireland Cathedral and a woman was on her own on the premises.
He said they tied up the woman and cleared all the glass case cabinets.
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The two armed gunmen made off on foot with the books and 21 other valuable manuscripts, some of them dating from 1488. Also snatched were two silver maces each worth £25,000, an ancient miniature version of the Koran, and a 1611 Geneva Bible.
Archbishop Robin Eames told the BBC: "It’s just a devastating blow, part of our heritage has gone.
"I would wonder about the market for these valuable items. I would assume that if it is a very professional job, as it seems to have been, there’s a market ready to receive these articles."
The items formed part of a collection at the library, which was opened by Archbishop Richard Robinson in 1771.
Eamon Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum in Dublin, said that loyalist elements in the North Armagh area had cooperated in the past with criminal gangs to dispose of stolen arts works and they may have sourced a specialist market for the material.