Prices of Books

Fabyan’s Chronicles (Pynson, 1516), first edition.

Dr. F. Bernard (1698), 4s. 8d.

Roberts (1815), £84—North. John North (1819), £92. (Perfect.)

Samuel Lysons (1820), £35—Lord Aylesford. Lord Aylesford (1888), £250—Christie Miller. (Completed by leaves from another edition.)

Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (John Daye, 1562-63), first edition, complete.

Earl of Ashburnham (1897), £150.

Frobisher’s Three Voyages of Discoverie, 1578, with Keymis’s Second Voyage to Guiana, 1596, in one vol., calf gilt, by Kalthoeber.

Beckford (1882), £300.

Ouvry’s copy of Frobisher, wanting the maps, sold for £68.

Froissart’s Cronycles (Pynson, 1523-25), two vols. folio.

G. Mason (1798), £36, 15s. Roxburghe (1812), £63. Towneley (1814), £42 (title of vol. i. a reprint). W. H. Crawford (Lakelands), 1891, £25.

Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589, with rare map, fine copy, in pigskin.

Jadis, £26, 5s. Same copy, Duke of Hamilton (1884), £23.

Hariot (T.), Merveilleux et estrange Rapport … Francofurti, 1590.

Duke of Hamilton (1884), fine copy, in morocco by Lewis, £97.

Linschoten’s Voyages into the Easte and West Indies, 1598, maps and plates from the Dutch edition, title inlaid, and last leaf mended.

Roxburghe, £10, 15s. Same copy, Beckford (1882), £14. Colonel Stanley, £22.

Lodge’s (Thomas) Rosalynde, 1598.

Longman (1815), £20 (imperfect). Heber, £5, 10s. Ouvry (1882), £63.

Lok’s (Henry) Ecclesiastes (London: Richard Field, 1597).

Longmans (1815), £28. Sotheby’s (March 1817), £6, 16s. G. Daniel, £38, 10s.

The first editions of Milton’s works have greatly increased in price. Not many years ago a copy of the first edition of the “Paradise Lost” could be obtained for about five pounds, but now a good copy is worth at least four times as much. The prices vary considerably with the date of the title-page, of which there are several issues. G. Daniel’s fine copy sold in 1864 for £28, 10s.

Milton’s Maske (Comus), 1637.

Loscombe, £25. G. Daniel, £36.

–– Poems, 1645, first edition, with portrait by Marshall.

G. Daniel, £5, 15s. Rare Books and MSS. (Sotheby, March 1897), fine uncut copy, £24, 10s.

Purchas his Pilgrimes, five vols., 1625-26.

Digby (1680), £3, 5s. 6d. H. Perkins, 1873, fine copy, £86. Beckford, 1883, fine copy, £63. Earl of Gosford (1884), £82 (crimson morocco). Earl of Crawford (1887), £60.

Rhodes (Hugh), Boke of Nurture, 1577.

Steevens (1800), £2, 2s. Longmans (1815), £15.

Ricraft’s Peculiar Characters of the Oriental Languages, sm. 4to.

Bindley, £19, 19s. Same copy, bound afterwards in russia extra by Lewis, who charged £1, 5s. for the binding, sold in Beckford sale (1883) for £8, 17s. 6d.

Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584.

Boswell, £3, 3s. Comerford (1881), £25, 10s. (citron morocco).

It is interesting to notice that in the old sales of the seventeenth century the folios of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson all sold for about the same price. Those of the first now sell for one hundred and two hundred times what they brought then, while those of the second and third do not bring ten times.

Beaumont and Fletcher’s Works, 1647.

Sir Edward Bysshe (1679), 13s. 6d. Smallwood (1684), 8s. A. Young and others (Puttick’s), 1875, £5. Alfred Crampton (1896), 10 guineas.

Jonson’s (Ben) Works, 1640.

Benj. Worsley (1678), £1, 13s. 6d. Sir Edward Bysshe (1677), £1, 10s. Lord Bateman (1896), £8, 5s.

Spenser’s Faerie Queene, 1590-96, first edition.

Sir Edward Bysshe (1679), 6s. 2d. Lloyd and Raymund (1685), 1s. Ouvry (1882), £33. Alfred Crampton (1611), 1896, with additional leaves, £85.

Weever’s Funeral Monuments, 1631.

Two copies on large paper in Beckford’s sale, part 4 (1883), olive morocco, index inlaid, £25; blue morocco, £38.

Wycliffe.

Mr. Addington bought at the Dix sale four unique tracts of Wycliffe for £400, and expressed his opinion that they would have been cheap at any price, but at his own sale (1886) they only realised £133—viz., Crede, &c., £37; Consolation, £27; Testament of Moyses, £36; Small Prayers to Common People, £33.

Americana is a class of book which has grown enormously in price. Anything published in America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries now fetches a price.

Smith’s Virginia, 1624.

Dr. F. Bernard (1698), 4s. 2d. Hunter (1813), £27, 6s.

A large paper copy sold at the Beckford sale (1883) for £605 (dedication copy to the Duchess of Richmond, in old brown morocco, covered with gold tooling, with the Duchess’s arms forming the centre ornaments).

Eliot Bible of 1661-63.