Prices of Books

The Duke of Devonshire gave £78, 15s. for the Spencer duplicate (perfect) in Alchorne’s sale (1813). Dawson Turner’s copy (wanting six leaves) was bought by T. Bateman in 1859 for £28; at his sale in 1893 it realised £58. Earl of Ashburnham’s copy (first and last leaf in facsimile), 1897, sold for £660—Quaritch (for the British Museum). The last Earl gave £150 for this copy.

Servitium de Transfiguratione Jhesu Christi (73).

The only known copy was bought for the British Museum at a sale at Puttick’s in 1862 for £200. It was found in a volume of Theological Tracts presented to the Congregational Library, Blomfield Street, by Joshua Wilson of Tunbridge Wells in 1831.

The Fayts of Arms (74).

The largest amount paid for a copy at a public sale is £336, which the Duke of Devonshire gave for the Roxburghe copy (with a few lines of the last leaf in facsimile).

Bryan Fairfax’s imperfect copy was bought by Francis Child for £1, 11s. 6d. At the sale of Lord Jersey’s library in 1885 it sold for £71.

Libri’s perfect, but mended and washed, copy, which he had bought in very poor condition from Mario the great tenor, was sold in 1862 to Mr. F. Huth for £255.

Mr. Corser’s perfect copy was bought in 1868 by Mr. Quaritch for £250.

Sir W. Tite’s copy (with the first two leaves in facsimile) sold in 1874 for £190. This copy was bought by Tite at the Rev. C. H. Crauford’s sale in 1854 for £77. Crauford bought it at Wilks’s sale (1847) for £54.

The Earl of Crawford’s perfect copy, with Table inlaid, sold in 1889 for £235. R. Lindsay, in Philadelphia, had this copy in his catalogue (June 1893) for £425.

The History of Blanchardin and Eglantine (78).

The only known copy, which is imperfect, is in the Althorpe library. This copy was bought at Ratcliffe’s sale by G. Mason for £3, 6s.; at Mason’s sale (1799) the Duke of Roxburghe bought it for £21. Earl Spencer gave £215, 5s. for it at the Roxburghe sale.

Eneydos (81).

R. Smith (1682), 3s. Walter Rea (1682), 1s. 6d.

F. Child gave 30s. for B. Fairfax’s perfect copy, which sold at the Earl of Jersey’s sale (1885) for £235.

Hanrott’s imperfect copy was bought in 1833 by Lord Auckland for £43, 1s.; at his sale two years afterwards H. Holland bought it for £24. At Holland’s sale (1860) Mr. H. Huth bought it for £84.

Mr. Quaritch had a copy in 1875 with two leaves in facsimile, otherwise a fine copy, which he marked £300.

The Art and Craft to Know Well to Die (86).

West’s perfect copy was bought by Ratcliffe for £5, 2s. 6d.; at Ratcliffe’s sale George III. bought it for 4 guineas.

Mr. C. Tutet’s copy was bought in 1786 by Payne for 2 guineas; probably this is the perfect copy which Payne sold to the National Library, Paris, for 10 guineas.

The Chastising of God’s Children (90).

R. Smith (1682). 5s. Dr. Bernard (1698), 1s. 10d. Osborne (1751), 15s.

The Roxburghe copy (perfect) was bought by Lord Spencer for £140.

The Earl of Aylesford bought the Marquis of Blandford’s copy (bound with “Treatise of Love,” No. 91) for £32, 10s., and at his sale in 1888 it realised £305. F. Perkins (1889), £100.

S. Alchorne’s copy sold in 1813 for £94, 10s.; Valentine’s copy in 1842 for £5. Blades describes this last in his catalogue list as Alchorne’s; but this is probably a mistake, as Valentine bought J. Inglis’s copy (1826) for £17, 10s.

Sex perelegantissimæ Epistolæ (1483).

24 leaves. The only copy known of this tract was discovered in 1874 by Dr. G. Könnecke, archivist of Marburg, in an old volume of seventeenth-century divinity in the Hecht-Heinean Library at Halberstadt. The discovery was described by Mr. Blades at the time in the Athenæum (Feb. 27, 1875). This copy was bought by the British Museum in 1890 for £250.

Almost as scarce and valuable as Caxtons are the books printed at St. Albans:—

The Chronicle of St. Albans (circa 1484), the second book printed at St. Albans, and the first edition of the Chronicle, was sold at the Earl of Ashburnham’s sale (1897) to Messrs. J. & J. Leighton for £180. It was imperfect, but no absolutely perfect copy is known.

In Quaritch’s catalogue, 1884 (No. 355), a copy with five leaves in facsimile and twenty-two others deficient, was marked £300.

The Boke of St. Albans (1486), a copy perfected in MS., was sold at the Roxburghe sale for £147. It was resold at the White Knights sale for £84. In March 1882 Mr. Quaritch bought it at Christie’s for 600 guineas. The Grenville copy now in the British Museum has gone through many vicissitudes, which were graphically described by Dr. Maitland in 1847. It appears that at the end of the last century the library of Thonock Hall, in the parish of Gainsborough, the seat of the Hickman family, was sorted out by an ignorant person who threw into a condemned heap all books without covers. A gardener who took an interest in heraldry begged permission to take home what he liked from this heap, and he chose among other books The Book of St. Albans. This remained in his cottage till June 1844, when his son’s widow sold 9 lbs. of books to a pedlar for 9d. The pedlar sold the lot for 3s. to a chemist in Gainsborough, who was rather struck by The Book of St. Albans, and tried to sell it, but the neighbours did not wish to buy it. Eventually he obtained £2, 2s. for it from a man who expected to sell it to advantage. The purchaser sold it to Stark the bookseller for £7, 7s. Stark took it to London and sold it to the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville for seventy or eighty guineas. Mr. Blades communicated this account to Notes and Queries (3rd Series, iv. 369).

A copy was sold at the Earl of Ashburnham’s sale (1897), which was stated to be the Roxburghe copy, completed by the Earl from another copy. Mr. Quaritch bought this for £385.

Still rarer than this is one of the treatises in a separate form, and printed in the next century:—

Juliana Barnes’s Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle. London: Wynkyn de Worde (1532). First separate edition, unique.

In the Harleian Library, afterwards in Gulston’s collection, who sold it to J. Ratcliffe, bought at his sale by White the bookseller, sold by him to Mr. Haworth, at whose sale it sold for 19 guineas (unbound). Earl of Ashburnham (1897), green morocco, £360.

A few prices may now be given of some of the most interesting publications of the old English press, consisting of the works of poets, travellers, &c., all of which have greatly increased in value, and will probably increase still more:—

King Arthur, W. Coplande, 1557.

Dent, £20, 9s. 6d., fine copy, in olive morocco by Lewis. H. Perkins (1873), £120 (same copy).

Bancroft’s (T.) Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs, 1639. Rare Books and MSS. (Sotheby, March 1897), fine uncut copy, £42.

Barnfield’s (Richard) Encomion of Lady Pecunia, 1598.

Malone bought Farmer’s copy for 19s. Ouvry (1882), £105.

Bradshaw’s (Henry) holy lyfe and history of Saynt Werburghe (Pynson, 1521, 4

, pp. 294).

Only three copies known: (1) Gough’s, now in the Bodleian; (2) Heber’s, sold in 1834 for £19, 5s.; (3) copy in Longman’s catalogue (Bibl. Anglo-Poetica), 1815, marked £63.

The prices of Caxton’s two editions of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” are recorded on a previous page of this chapter. Imperfect copies of Pynson’s first and second editions were marked £25 in Longman’s catalogue (1815). The first edition (fifty-four leaves inlaid and two leaves in facsimile) fetched at the Heber sale £60, 18s., and at the Earl of Ashburnham’s, £233. The second edition (1526) sold at the Roxburghe sale for £30, 9s., and an imperfect copy at the Ashburnham sale for £26.

Wynkyn de Worde’s edition is as valuable as a Caxton, and a fine and perfect copy sold at the Ashburnham sale for £1000.

Cutwode’s (T.) Caltha Poetarum; or, Bumble Bee, 1599.

Three copies only known: (1) Malone’s, now in the Bodleian; (2) Heber’s, from which the Roxburghe Club reprint was made, sold in 1834 for £3, 18s.; (3) a copy which belonged successively to Steevens, Caldecott, and Freeling. Steevens’ sale (1800), £2, 12s. 6d.; Freeling (1836), £11, 15s.

According to Ritson, this book “was staid at the press by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London; and such copies as could be found or were already taken were to be presently brought to the Bishop of London to be burnt.” Dibdin gives an amusing account of the Roxburghe Club reprint (1815) in his “Reminiscences” (vol. i. p. 465, note):—“A bet was laid (the winner of the bet to give the Roxburghe Club a dinner) between Sir M. M. Sykes and Mr. Dent whether the anniversary meeting of 1815 was the third or fourth of the club. Mr. Dent was the loser, when Mr. Heber promised to present the club with a reprint of the above poem at the extra dinner in contemplation. Only nine days intervened, but within that period the reprint was transcribed, superintended at the press by Mr. Haslewood (without a single error), bound by Charles Lewis, and presented to the members on sitting down to dinner. Mr. Haslewood was reported to have walked in his sleep with a pen in his hand during the whole period of its preparation.”

Drummond of Hawthornden’s Forth Feasting, 1617, bought by Ouvry at Sotheby’s in 1858 for £8, 15s. (bound in morocco), fetched £60 at Ouvry’s sale in 1882.