PRICES OF BOOKS.
IN a volume which we owe to the enterprise of Mr. Elliot Stock,* we find arranged conveniently for reference the prices paid during last year (to speak accurately, December, 1886—November, 1887), for some fifteen thousand books, sold at book-auctions. These prices, it must be remembered, are, for the most part, not what the ordinary public would have to pay. Book-auctions, like other auctions, are frequented chiefly by the trade. Private buyers are permitted to pick up little matters of no particular value, but names which are recognised at once as of magnates in the bookselling business are
appended to most of the lots. We may conjecture, indeed, in the absence of any explanation, that where a blank is left for the buyer's name, a private purchaser may be understood. Such blanks are rare, and never follow the really important items. A reader, then, of this volume may gather from it approximately the value of his own library, but not what he would have to pay for any contemplated additions to it.
It is satisfactory to find that, on the whole, literary merit has something to do with the value of books. Other con- siderations, some of them trifling enough, enter in ; but this is always present in a degree. Mere rarity is not enough to make a book valuable, though it increases value enormously. Anyhow, there can be hardly found in this long catalogue one volume which has not merit or interest of some kind or other. If, as Leonard Fairfield's friendly bookseller in "My Novel" cynically remarks, "those who buy seldom read," they at least demand that what they buy should be readable, perhaps we ought to say, should have been readable at some time.
One naturally turns first to Bibles. They easily keep the head of the list, both for number and price. It so happened that Lord Crawford's sale fell during the year, and it brought some very rare specimens to the hammer. The editio princeps, by Gutenberg and Fust, conjecturally assigned to 1450-55, fetched £2,650, and another edition, the earliest that bears a date (1462), £1,025. Putting aside these gigantic figures, forty-one Bibles sold for £2,474. If the Bibles still fetch their price, the classics are sadly fallen in value. They do not even appear very often in the catalogues. Horace, as might be expected, heads the list, as far as number is con- cerned. The Aldine edition fetched £30 10s., and the Elzevir £18 5s. Next to these came Pine's sumptuous volumes, which sold. for sums varying from £8 2s. 6d. to 23 5s. An editio princeps seems still to fetch a high price. Homer, we find, sold for £135; but anything less venerable and rare is at a discount. Ten volumes of the Elzevir Cicero going for £10 15s., would have seemed incredible to collectors of fifty, or even twenty, years ago. Many great classics do not appear at all, or in a lamentable fashion. Poppo's Thncydides, in eleven volumes, goes for the miserable price of £1 5s. The same bulk of third-class " cribs " would probably fetch more. .ZEschylus appears once, in the princeps (23 10s.), Sophocles not at all, Euripides four times, the Aldine edition of 1503 selling for £6 17s. 6d. Pindar, Polybius, Statius, Ausonius, do not appear at all. Others occur only once or twice, and com- monly at lamentable prices, which do not reach even the cost of binding. This, of course, represents a change which has been going on for some time. Middle-aged readers will remember the second-hand classical booksellers of a generation ago, who have disappeared and left scarcely a genuine representative. Some may recall the name of Baldock, of High Holborn, among whose twenty or thirty thousand volumes scarcely one non-classical book could be found. There is no such shop now, because the old classics below the first class have lost their value. The present writer bought the other day in one lot, for less than half-a-sovereign, four folios, a Plutarch (1620), a Homer (1564), and an Athenwns (1600). The prices marked in them, in an eighteenth-century hand, were f.:4, El 17s. 6d., and £3 10s. 6d. respectively; and in the second (a Stephanus) the owner had written,—" A magnificent collection rising daily in value "! Felix opportunitcrie mortis ! He did not live to Bee it knocked down for something less than three shillings.
But if old tastes disappear, new ones arise to take, and more than take, their places. Perhaps that which most pre- vails just now is the passion for first editions of Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Browning, and some other modern authors. Most of us have sometimes regretted that a sagacious
• Book-Prices Current a Record of the Prices at which Books have been Sold at Auction from December, 1886, to November, 1887. London : Elliot Stock.
ancestor did not buy half-an-acre somewhere in the neighbour- hood of Cheapside or Lombard Street. A few have a regret far more poignant, when they remember that an ancestor has had some precious possession of the kind, and improvidently sold it. But in this last craze of book-buyers many of us may find occasions for reproaching ourselves. We have had these green-covered numbers of Dickens, these yellow-covered numbers of Thackeray, and treated them as so much lumber to be cleared out. Even if one has had the prudence to bind them, this very prudence has seriously damaged their value. Take "The Pickwick Papers" as an instance. "Complete in the original numbers," we find them bringing £9, or even 213 10s. Bound, they will hardly repay their original cost. And yet no sane person would prefer keeping a book in numbers. Browning Societies have naturally helped to raise the prices of the poet's works. "Bells and Pomegranates"
brought 10s. to the lucky owner who had kept the book in numbers, and also had had the sagacity of denying himself the pleasure of reading it, for it is described as "uncut." It appears once only in the index, so closely do Browning col- lectors cherish their possessions. " Sordello " is mentioned twice, fetching on one occasion £2 15s., on the other £1 ls. only; but then, the latter copy had the misfortune to be bound in morocco with the top edge gilt. The ignorant might suppose this to be an advantage; but collectors prefer the native cloth, brown or green. But the Laureate keeps, as is meet, the crown in the way of prices. Here are four consecutive items. The edition of 1833, £26 10s. ; the edition of 1842 (two volumes), £64; "Poems by Two Brothers," £11 10s. ; "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson," £26. For the most part, however, they seem to bring but moderate prices on an average, the first editions having been, as a rule, very large. But of all English books, "The Compleat Angler" "carries the cake." (We do not speak of such curiosities as Caxton's "Game and Playe of Chess,"—£645.) The first edition (Walton, 1653, and Cotton, 1676) realised the enormous stun of 2195. A second edition, only two years later (only that unluckily wanted the title-page) went for £3 3s. Ruskin is a name well known to collectors, and occurs many times in the list. The most valuable lot consisted of "The Stones of Venice," "Seven Lamps of Architecture," and "Modern Painters," all first editions. This sold for £64. This was the only time that a first edition of the last of the three came into the market. The first appeared more frequently, fetching as much as £20. Among minor books which owe their value to rarity rather than merit, may be mentioned A Beckett's Comic Histories of Rome and England. They appear frequently in the lists, and always command fair prices. Here, surely, the book-collector's disinclination to read becomes a virtue. It is strange to think that for the price, or less than the price of these, one could get Dugdale's " Monasticon," or Clarendon's "History," or the"Biographic ljniverselle" (fifty-two volumes for £2 168.), or Bell's "Poets" (forty-four volumes for £1 5s.) Such are the eccentricities of book-buying ! Large-paper copies are in demand, and it adds to the value of a book that copies should be numbered. Yet here, too, there are anomalies which are not easily accounted for. Large-paper copies of "The Badminton Library," a creditable, but not more than creditable series of publications, have risen, in value ; while editions de luxe of books which stand on a quite different plane of merit have fallen. Probably, on the rare occasions when a sportsman buys a book, he is free with his money. To give some miscellaneous items, "The Memorials and Chronicles of Great Britain" (Master of the Rolls' series), one hundred and eighty-four volumes, sold for 238. They came from the library of a late Professor of History, and were, curiously enough, 'uncut. "The Hakluyt Voyages," three volumes (37); Froissart, published in 1525 (41); Wynkyn de Worde's "Vitas Patrum " (271), may be noted. A little volume of the "Dc Seneetute," from the press of Benjamin Franklin, was sold for £11. Old American books generally, it may be observed, sell well. It would be a curious calculation, could it possibly be made, to compare the prices given for these thousands of volumes with what they cost the original purchasers. If we were to strike out some four or five hundred, which have reached an adventitious value from all kinds of circumstances, the balance would probably be against the present value. And these, it must be remembered, are the pick of English books. Countless multitudes pass into a worthlessness below any possible valuation. It is a melancholy reflection for those who write books, a class that threaten soon to be as numerous as the class that buys. A man may well think to himself,--' The chances are great that my name will never appear in such a list, or that appearing, it will be disparaged by the price set against it.' The present writer has seldom felt such pride as when he saw that some books of his own had been sold for little less than they could be purchased at new !
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