Prices of Books. Henry B. Wheatley
Osborne, the chief bookseller of his time, bought the great Harley library, consisting of about 50,000 volumes of printed books, 41,000 prints, and about 350,000 pamphlets, for £13,000. This seems a small amount for so matchless a collection, but it is not certain that Osborne made a very profitable investment by his purchase. We shall have more to say of the bookseller and the library in the next chapter.
As an instance of the low price of books at this time, the anecdote of Mr. David Papillon’s agreement with Osborne may be mentioned here. The contract was that the bookseller should supply Mr. Papillon (who died in 1762) with one hundred pounds’ worth of books at threepence apiece, the only conditions being that they should be perfect, and that there should be no duplicates. Osborne was at first pleased with his bargain, and sent in a large number of books; but he soon found that it would be impossible to carry out the agreement without great loss, as he was obliged to send in books worth shillings instead of pence. Long before he had supplied the eight thousand volumes required, he begged to be let off the contract.
Things were worse in Russia, where Klostermann, the bookseller to the Imperial Court, sold books by the yard (fifty to one hundred roubles, according to binding). Every courtier who had hopes of a visit from the Empress Catharine was expected to have a library, and as few of them had any literary taste, they bought them at this rate. Sometimes waste-paper books were lettered with the names of celebrated authors.
Authorship could hardly become a profession until after the invention of printing, and even then it was long before a living could be got out of books. Dr. Edward Castell laboured for seventeen years in the compilation of his immense undertaking—the Lexicon Heptaglotton, to accompany Walton’s Polyglot Bible. During this time he maintained at his own cost as writers seven Englishmen and as many foreigners. All of them died before the work was completed. Besides expending £12,000 of his own money he was obliged to borrow £2000 more, and this not being sufficient, he petitioned Charles II. that a prison might not be the reward of so much labour. Notwithstanding a circular letter from the king recommending the purchase of this work the author ended his days in poverty, and a great part of the impression was thrown into garrets, where many of the copies were destroyed by damp or rats.
A similar case was that of Thomas Madox, the learned author of the “History of the Exchequer,” who wrote to Dr. Charlett requesting him to get his book into the College Libraries at Oxford, and explaining that the cost of the impression was £400 for paper and print, and as only 481 copies were printed, “when all the books shall be sold I shall be just able to pay the charges with a trifling over-plus. … This affair,” he adds, “has given me much perplexity, and perfectly cured me of scribbling.”8
Thomas Hearne was more fortunate, and amassed a small fortune by his publications. One thousand guineas were found in gold in his rooms at St. Edmund Hall after his death. His books were soon out of print, and fetched large prices even in his own lifetime.
Lord Spencer bought the whole of the library of Count Revickzky, a catalogue of which had been privately printed by the original owner at Berlin in 1784. According to Dibdin, when the Count was in England he offered his whole collection to Lord Spencer for a certain round sum to be paid to him immediately, and for a yearly sum by way of annuity. The offer was accepted, and as the Count died soon afterwards, Lord Spencer obtained the library at a cheap rate. The same noble collector offered the Duke di Cassano Serra £500 for two books, viz., the Juvenal of Ulric Han, and the Horace of Arnaldus de Bruxella, Naples, 1474, but the offer was not accepted. In 1820 Lord Spencer bought the whole collection.
The Duke of Devonshire purchased the valuable library of Dr. Thomas Dampier, Bishop of Ely, for nearly £10,000 after the bishop’s death in 1812. Dr. Dibdin has printed in his “Reminiscences” (vol. i. p. 363) a list of prices at which Dr. Dampier valued the various classes of books in his library.
Little idea of the prices of books can be obtained from the amounts given for a whole library, but as in future chapters particulars will be printed of the great libraries that have been disposed of by auction, it seemed well to mention here a few instances of libraries that have been sold entire. The greatest of these is the magnificent library of Earl Spencer, which was sold in 1892 to Mrs. Rylands, and has been transferred from Althorpe to Manchester. The exact amount paid for this library has not been announced, but it is supposed to have been about a quarter of a million pounds.
In respect to the history of prices of books, there have been times of inflation and times of depression, just as in the history of prices generally, but it will be seen that in spite of these vicissitudes scarce books have gradually increased in value. The first signs of the growth of bibliomania are seen in the sales of Dr. Mead’s and Dr. Askew’s libraries in the middle of the last century, which aroused a great interest among book collectors.
During the great Napoleonic wars books became very scarce, because Englishmen were prevented from purchasing on the Continent, but upon the conclusion of the peace there was a steady flow of books into the country.
The Duke of Roxburghe’s sale in 1812 was a great event, forming, as it did, an epoch in the history of book collecting, and the widespread fervour of bibliomaniacs may be dated from that period. Great sales followed, and then came the sale of the enormous Heber library, which let out too many books on the market at once. After this there followed a dull time, but a revival came with the Bright sale in 1846 and Stowe sale in 1849, and the Daniel and Corser sales between 1860 and 1870, and the Henry Perkins sale in 1873, were great events. The last few years have been marked by many great sales, those of the Sunderland, the Beckford, and Hamilton Libraries, and the Turner, Gaisford, Crawford, and Ashburnham collections being among the most remarkable. The greatly increased prices obtained for books have induced many proprietors to sell their literary treasures.
It is well to remember that the value of all books is not rising, but that whole classes have fallen in price. Greek and Roman Classics, and the Fathers and Theological Literature generally, have been most markedly depreciated in value.
Fashion guides alterations in the prices of books, just as she does in other less important matters. Thus we find at one time certain books quoted at high prices, which not many years afterwards have become drugs in the market. Still, a careful review of the subject will show that fashion is not nearly so potent as in some other departments, say, for instance, in the case of pictures, which certainly vary in price more than books. In spite, therefore, of signs of variableness, it will be seen that there is a continuous increase of price among certain classes of books which are sure to retain their value, and even to be still more esteemed as time passes.
It may be well to inquire what are some of the causes which lead to an increase in the price, and to distinguish between those which are permanent and those which are ephemeral. The growth of book-collecting in the United States has had a most potent influence, and large purchases made for many years in England have drained off a large number of books, low priced as well as high priced, which will never return to this country. Another cause is the increase of public libraries in Great Britain, and when books are bought for these libraries they are permanently removed from the open market, as they are not when sold to an individual, because his library will most probably eventually come to the hammer. These two causes would be sufficient in themselves to permanently increase the price of scarce books, but there are still others to be mentioned. There has been of late years a greatly increased interest felt in the history of books—in printing, in binding—and increased knowledge has shown the great claims of a large number of books to a higher appreciation than hitherto. Then again, the class of the wealthy who can afford to collect choice libraries has largely increased; and lastly, the belief that the collecting of books is by no means a bad investment has not been without effect. This last point opens up a very interesting question in ethics, Should a collector look upon his collections as an investment? The late Mr. J. Hill Burton argues very strongly against this view in his “Book-Hunter.” He writes—
“The mercenary spirit must not be admitted to a share in the enjoyments of the book-hunter. … If [he] allows money-making, even for those he is to leave behind, to be combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh relish, its exhilarating influence, and becomes the source of wretched cares and paltry anxieties. When money is the object, let