A LOVE-SICK librarian who stole ancient and rare books worth £175,000 walked free from court yesterday.

Early editions of works by Chaucer and Donne were among more than 455 publications, posters and other documents taken from Manchester’s Central Library by 41-year-old Norman Buckley.

Devastated by a relationship breakdown, the library assistant hoarded the stolen collection at his home and sold more than 40 items for £11,000 on the internet auction site, eBay.

Police were alerted to the thefts when a rare-book dealer in Somerset spotted the library’s stamp in a photograph of one of the books that Buckley was advertising online.

When police raided his flat in Hulme, Greater Manchester, they found more than 400 books, all of which had been indexed by the librarian using his own card system. They included a 16th-century edition of the collected works of Chaucer, worth £35,000, and a volume of political writings by Coleridge, Shelley and Keats. A book of letters about the death of Louis XVI was recovered, as was a 1675 edition of the historian William Camden’s The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth.

Among the items already sold by Buckley, who has a degree in fine art and photography, was a 1654 publication of Donne’s Elegies, for which the winning bidder paid £1,800.

Manchester Crown Court heard that Buckley turned to theft after becoming depressed when his girlfriend of nine years left him for another man at Christmas 2004.

Denise Fitzpatrick, in mitigation, said that his motive for the thefts was not financial. The buzz he gained from stealing the books was an “emotional release from the turmoil he found himself in”. He was now “filled with remorse”.

The court heard that Buckley took the books two or three at a time from the library’s private collection between January last year and March this year. A security system failed to alert staff to the thefts.

Police estimated that the total value of the items stolen at £175,000, of which the value of those books they have been unable to recover is £12,000.

At an earlier hearing, Buckley, who worked for the library’s local studies and archives team, pleaded guilty to 10 specimen counts of theft and asked for a further 445 offences to be taken into consideration.

Judge Clement Goldstone QC handed him a prison sentence of 65 weeks, suspended for two years, and ordered him to perform 250 hours of community service.

The judge said that that Buckley was escaping an immediate custodial sentence because he had helped the police to recover so many of the stolen books, which were part of the country’s literary heritage.

“Every time you offered a book for sale you were breaking the trust that had been placed in you,” he said.

The judge added that the suspended sentence would, however, give Buckley “the opportunity to become an honest and decent member of society once again”.

A spokesman for Manchester City Council said later that a thorough review of security measures at the central library had been carried out “and further action taken to ensure the security of the collections”.

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