In 1916 Maggs Bros bought
the penis of
Napoleon Bonaparte from the descendants of Abbé Ange Paul Vignali, who had given the last rites and surreptitiously cut off the member in question. Vignali apparently brought it to
Corsica, and died in a vendetta in 1828. He passed on the memento to his sister, who at her death passed it on to her son. In 1924, the desiccated item was sold to
Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, who mounted it in a case of blue Morocco and velvet. In 1927, it was exhibited at the Museum of French Art. Maggs Brothers pulled off the greatest bookselling coup of the inter-war period, when in 1932 they successfully negotiated with the government of Soviet Russia to acquire not only a
Gutenberg Bible, but also the celebrated
Codex Sinaiticus. In 1931 Ernest Maggs had travelled to the Soviet Union with a colleague, Maurice Ettinghausen, who was both a bookseller and a scholar. When they saw the priceless Codex Sinaiticus, Ettinghausen remarked to his hosts, "If you ever want to sell it, let me know." Some time later, Maggs received a postcard saying that the Soviet government would be prepared to sell the Codex Sinaiticus for £200,000. The British group offered £40,000; finally, a price of £100,000 was agreed upon, an enormous sum and the highest price ever paid for a book at the time. The British government agreed to pay half the amount and guaranteed the remainder if it were not raised by public subscription. Maggs have regularly set book price records; in 1947 they bought a second Gutenberg Bible—the Dyson Perrins copy—for £22,000, on behalf of Sir Philip Frere, and a few years later resold it to Mrs. Doheny of California, this latter copy now the only one in Japan. In 1998 the firm bought for £4,200,000 a copy of the first book printed in England,
William Caxton's
The Canterbury Tales. The price remained the record paid for a printed book . == Warrants and customers ==