BOOK COLLECTORS' NOTES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In the " Book Collectors' Notes " in your issue of May 8rd, Mr. Symons raises an interesting question when he refers to Walton's Compleat Angler. Book collectors know only too well how different the first and second editions of this book are from one another. The edition of 1653 had seven plates, that of 1655 ten plates. The first edition had 246 pages in thirteen chapters, the second edition 855 pages in twenty-one chapters, with the four new illustrations, so that in many respects the second edition was by far the more important book, and is, as Mr. Symons says, much rarer than the first. It must have been a very popular book in its time ; it found itself placed in the pockets and creels of the fishermen of the day, and the majority of the copies were damaged by constant use. Collectors, however, demand the first edition, and are prepared to pay a very high price for it, one copy having fetched £1,290 an immaculate copy, by the way. For the second edition, however, a price very considerably less, only amounting to about £150, is paid, not in proportion to the rarity of the book but because th, first edition, which is really more often to be found, happens to be the book which collectors desire to have.
Mr. Symons also raises the question about destruction, and in that respect one is reminded of the extreme scarcity of the first edition of Watts's Divine and Moral Songs. There are not half-a-dozen copies of it, I suppose, in existence. All the rest have been destroyed, probably in nurseries, and in consequence the book is very rare. The same remark applies to early editions of Cocker's Arithmetic, their destruction having taken place at the hands of the schoolboys of the period, and hence we find that books which must have been issued in large numbers in early days, and were deservedly popular, are very rare because of that very popularity, which involved their speedy destruction.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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