In their scholarly new catalogue Messrs. Ingpen and
Stonehill will startle some readers by quoting Tennyson first editions at five shillings apiece, while Mr. F. W. Bain's Oriental fantasies, on large paper, are priced at fifteen shillings, and Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism at two guineas for the two series. The explanation is, of course, that the Tennysons are late works which sold in vast numbers, while the first editions of the other authors were small. Tennyson's early pieces are extremely rare and precious, but a long time must pass before a first edition of, say, Demeter will be worth more than its published price. Scarcity determines price with old books as with other things. Two famous novels, in their first issues, are noted in this catalocrue. Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison appears both the six-volume octavo and the seven-volume duodecimo form, both -dated 1754, though the duodecimo was finished first. The octavo costs eight guineas and the other five—prices which are certain to mount as the scanty supply of earlier English classics becomes exhausted. The first edition of Thackeray's The Virginians, in the original parts with the wrappers and advertisements but bound up, is priced at eighteen guineas. It is notable, by the way, that Thackeray's great novels have never rivalled those of Dickens from the collector's standpoint.
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