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The bookbreaker of New York - 
a ripping yarn

Michael Visontay

"Noble Fragments"

A book dealer’s act of literary vandalism
Breaking up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible

How a broken bible changed my family’s fortunes

In a career spanning forty years, Australian journalist Michael Visontay has worked as a reporter and senior editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. Currently he works as Commissioning Editor of The Jewish Independent. Michael has taught journalism at university and is the author of several nonfiction books. He recently returned from a speaking tour in the US about his book Noble Fragments.

One hundred years ago a New York bookseller committed a sacrilege: he broke up a Gutenberg Bible, the Holy Grail of rare books, sold it off in individual pages which he called “Noble Fragments”, and made a fortune. Many years later, a chance discovery revealed he was distantly related to Visontay’s family in Australia and that his gambit changed their destiny. He became obsessed by the Gutenberg’s invisible imprint on his life, and decided to tell the story of the maverick who scandalised the bibliophile world. His research opened the door onto a remarkable gallery of tycoons, collectors and institutions who snapped up the pages of the bible that had been dispersed throughout America and around the world.