Chapter VIII: Prices of Early Printed Books

It is impossible in the following chapters to do more than select some of the chief classes of valuable books in order to indicate the changes that have taken place in the prices. It will be noticed that the great enhancement of prices which is so marked a feature of the present age commenced about the beginning of the present century.

Bibliomania can scarcely be said to have existed in the seventeenth century, but it commenced in the middle of the next century, when the Mead library was sold. Still it attracted little attention until the sale of the Roxburghe library in 1812, when it had become a power. In the middle of the present century there was a dull time, but during the last quarter the succession of sales realising one, two, and three thousand pounds have been continuous, with occasional sales realising much larger amounts. Great changes have occurred at different times in the taste of collectors for certain classes of books.

We may obtain a good idea of the public taste in books by analysing a list of the highest prices obtained at three such representative sales as the Sunderland, the Hamilton Palace, and the Ashburnham libraries.

At the first of these the largest prices were obtained for the first editions of Bibles, classics, Italian poets, &c.; at the second, fine bindings took the lead; and at the third, Bibles and Caxtons, and other early literature occupied the first place.

All these classes are dealt with in the following chapters. In the present one, the most important among the early Bibles, the first editions of the classics, and early Italian literature are recorded. These are among the chief of those books which have been steadily rising for years, and now stand at enormous prices.

It is not safe to prophesy, but there is no reason to doubt that if riches continue to increase these prices will also advance. As these books are placed in great libraries they naturally become scarcer each year. We must, however, always bear in mind that the number of libraries and individuals who can afford to spend thousands of pounds on single books are few, and if they are reduced, those who remain in the field are likely to get books cheaper.

While the first editions of the classics will probably always keep up their price, later editions have experienced a fall from which they are never likely to recover. Scholarship and knowledge of manuscripts have so greatly advanced, that many of the old high-priced editions are now hopelessly out of date, and good German texts, which can be obtained at a few shillings, are naturally preferred.

The Delphin and Oxford classics, which were once so much sought after, have now sunk to a comparatively low price. The large paper copy of Dr. Samuel Clarke’s edition of “Cæsar” (2 vols. imp. folio, 1712), of which only twenty-five copies were printed, was once a high priced book. The Duke of Grafton’s copy fetched £64, and Topham Beauclerk’s £44. There is a story connected with the latter, which should be noted. Beauclerk gave four guineas for his copy to the mother of a deceased officer, the sum she asked, but when he was afterwards told by his bookseller that it was worth seventeen guineas, he sent the additional thirteen guineas to the lady. Certainly the Sunderland copy fetched £101 in 1881, but this was a special case, owing to the connection of the great Duke of Marlborough with the book. The Duke of Hamilton’s copy, which had belonged to Louis XIV., sold in 1884 for £36; but Beckford’s copy, bound in red morocco, only brought £6.

Block books are of such excessive rarity that they have always been high priced, but like the earliest books printed from movable types, they have greatly increased in value of late years. This is seen in the case of the copy of the second edition of the _Biblia Pauperum_, which fetched £1050 at the Earl of Ashburnham’s sale. This same copy brought £257 at Willett’s sale, but at Hanrott’s the price fell to the small amount of £36, 15s.

The following are some of the prices that those magnificent books--the Mazarin Bible and the first Bible with a date--have realised:--

Biblia Sacra Latina (Moguntiæ, Gutenberg et Fust, circa 1450-55):--

_On vellum_--G. & W. Nicols, 1825, £504 (Messrs. Arch for H.
Perkins). H. Perkins, 1873, £3400. Earl of Ashburnham, 1897,
£4000.

_On paper_--Sykes, 1824, £199, 10s. (H. Perkins). Hibbert, 1829,
£215. Bishop of Cashel, 1858, £595. H. Perkins, 1873, £2690.
Thorold (Syston Park), £3900. Earl of Gosford, 1884 (vol. i.
in original binding), £500. Earl of Crawford, 1887, £2650.
Earl of Hopetoun, 1889 (one leaf injured, and slightly
wormed), £2000.

Biblia Sacra Latina (Moguntiæ, Fust et Schoeffer, 1462) [first
Latin Bible with a date]:--

_On vellum_--

Duc de la Valliere, 4085 francs. }
Count MacCarthy, 4750 francs. }
Watson Taylor, 1823, £215. } Same copy.
Dent, 1827, £173. }
H. Perkins, 1873, £780. }
Earl of Crawford, 1887, £1025. }

The Lamoignon copy, bought by Mr. Cracherode for 250 guineas, is
now in the British Museum. Sunderland, 1881, £1600. Thorold,
£1000.

The Latin Version of the Psalms, in its second edition, by Fust and
Schoeffer, 1459 (printed on vellum), sold at Sykes’s sale for
£136, 10s. At the Syston Park sale (Thorold) it brought £4950,
a greater price even than has been given for the Mazarin Bible.
It has been erroneously stated that this was the MacCarthy
copy, which was sold in 1815 for 3350 francs. The MacCarthy
copy was bought by Hibbert, and at his sale in 1829 it became
the property of Baron Westreenen.[54]

Biblia Latina, folio Venetiis (N. Jenson), 1476, printed on vellum,
capital letters illuminated, in red morocco, sold at the Merly
sale for £168. Beckford copy (supposed to be the same copy)
sold in 1882 for £330. H. Perkins, 1873, £290.

The first edition of the Bible in English (translated by Coverdale),
1535 (with some leaves mended), was sold at the Earl of
Ashburnham’s sale for £820. Dent’s copy £89 in 1827 (title and
two leaves in facsimile). Freeling’s copy, £34, 10s. in 1836.
Dunn Gardner’s, 1854 (with title and one leaf in facsimile),
£365. H. Perkins, 1873 (title and two leaves in facsimile),
£400. Earl of Crawford’s (imperfect), £226.

The first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament (1526) sold in Richard
Smith’s sale, 1682, for 6s. Ames bought the Harleian copy for
15s. This was sold at Ames’s sale, 1760, to John White for £15,
14s. 6d. It was sold by White to the Rev. Dr. Gifford for twenty
guineas, and bequeathed by Gifford, with the rest of his
library, to the Baptists’ library at Bristol.

The Complutensian Polyglot (6 vols. folio, 1514-17) is said to have
cost Cardinal Ximenes £40,000. Six hundred copies were printed.
The following prices have been paid for the one vellum copy in
the market, and for some paper copies:--

_Three on vellum_--(1) Royal Library, Madrid; (2) Royal Library,
Turin; (3) supposed to have been reserved for the Cardinal.
Pinelli, 1789, £483, bought by MacCarthy. MacCarthy, 1817
£676 (16,000 francs), bought by Hibbert. Hibbert, 1829, £525.

_On paper_--Harleian copy, sold by Osborne for £42. Maittaire’s
imperfect copy sold for 50s. Sunderland, £195. Earl of
Crawford, 1887 (general title wanting), £56. Beresford Hope,
1882, £166. W. H. Crawford (Lakelands), 1891, £100.

The vellum copy sold in the Pinelli sale was, according to Dibdin,
taken to Dr. Gosset when on a bed of sickness, in the hopes
that the sight might work a cure on that ardent book-lover.[55]

John Brocario, son of Arnoldus Brocario, the printer of this
polyglot, when a lad, was deputed to take the last sheets to the
Cardinal. He dressed himself in his best clothes, and delivered
his charge into Ximenes’ hand, who exclaimed, “I render thanks
to Thee, O God, that Thou hast protracted my life to the
completion of these biblical labours.” He told his friends that
the surmounting of the various difficulties of his political
situation did not afford him half the solace which arose from
the finishing of his Polyglot.[56] A few weeks after the noble
enthusiast died.

Plantin Polyglot Bible, 1569-72, 5 vols. Five hundred copies
printed; greater part lost at sea.

Earl of Ashburnham, 1897, on vellum (wanting the “Apparatus”), £79.

Walton’s Polyglot Bible, 6 vols. folio, 1657 (with Castell’s
Lexicon), does not keep up its price.

Seaman, 1676, £8, 2s. Bernard, 1698, £10. Duke of Grafton (without
Castell), £38, 13s. Edwards, £61. Heath, £73, 10s. (bought by
the Earl of Essex). H. Perkins, 1873, £19, 15s. At the Wimpole
library sale (Lord Chancellor Hardwicke), 1888, a copy of Walton
without Castell fetched £9, 5s. The Ashburnham copy, which had
belonged to Henry, Duke of Gloucester, fourth son of Charles I.,
with his name on the binding, which was in blue morocco, sold in
1897 for £28.

EDITIONES PRINCIPES OF THE CLASSICS

ÆSOPUS. Fabulæ Latine et Italice. Neapoli, 1485; first edition of
Æsop with the Italian version. Hibbert’s, £17; Libri, 480
francs; Earl of Ashburnham, £203.

ANACREON. Lutetiæ, 1554, on vellum. Sunderland, 1881, £221.

ARISTOTELES. Opera varia. Venetiis, 1483, 2 vols. Earl of
Ashburnham, 1897 (printed on vellum), each volume decorated in
the highest style of Italian art of the period, fifty-nine
beautiful historical and ornamental initials, £800.

CICERO. Opera Omnia _Mediolani_, per Alex. Minutianum et Gulielmos
fratres, 1498-99 [first edition of the collected works], four
vols. in two, folio, old yellow morocco. Sunderland, £30, 10s.

---- Epistolæ ad familiares. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1467,
folio, the first edition and the first book printed in Rome and
in Roman letters. Sunderland, £295.

---- Epistolæ. Venetiis, a Nicolao Jenson, 1471, folio. Mead, £3,
3s.; Askew, £11, 16s.; Sunderland, £12.

---- Orationes. Adam de Ambergau, 1472, folio. Askew gave £3, 5s.
for his copy, which was bought by Dr. Hunter at his sale for
£12. It is now at Glasgow University. Sunderland, £18.

CLAUDIANUS. Opera. Venetiæ, 1482, first edition. Mead, £2, 2s.;
Askew, £7, 15s.; Pinelli, £9, 9s.; Sunderland (broken binding),
£4.

GELLIUS (AULUS). Noctes Atticæ. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1469,
folio, first edition. Pinelli, £58, 16s. (printed on vellum);
Sunderland, £790.

---- Noctes. Venetiis, per Nicolaum Jenson, 1472, folio. Mead, £2,
12s. 6d.; Askew, £11, 10s.; Sunderland, £13, 10s.

HOMERUS. Opera Omnia. Florentiæ sumpt. Bern. et Nerii Nerliorum,
1488, two vols. folio, first edition. The British Museum copy
was purchased for £17; Wodhull, £200; Sunderland, £48.

---- Homeri Odyssea Græce. Florentiæ, 1488, first edition. Duke of
Hamilton, 1884, very large and fine copy, red morocco, by Clarke
& Bedford, £25.

---- On vellum (one of the four known to exist). Dent, part 1, 1827,
£142, 16s.

HORATIUS. Opera. 1470, small folio, first edition, with a date.
Sunderland, £29. The Naples edition of 1474 is called by Dibdin
“the rarest classical volume in the world,” and it was chiefly
to possess this book that Earl Spencer bought the famous library
of the Duke of Cassano.

JUSTINUS. Venetiis, per Nicolaum Jenson, 1470, small folio, first
edition. Mead, £3, 3s.; Askew, £13, 13s. (sold to the British
Museum); Pinelli, £18, 7s. 6d.; Sunderland, £15.

JUVENALIS ET PERSIUS. Editio Princeps. Dr. Askew gave £3 for his
copy; at his sale it was purchased by the British Museum for
thirteen guineas.

LIVIUS. The first edition, printed at Rome by Sweynheym and
Pannartz, as is supposed, in 1469. The only copy printed on
vellum which is known to exist is now in the Grenville Library
(British Museum). It was for years in the possession of the
Benedictine Library at Milan. It was bought by Sykes at J.
Edwards’s sale (1815) for £903. At Sykes’s sale (1824) it was
bought by Payne and Foss for £472, 10s. These booksellers sold
it to Dent, and at Dent’s sale (1827) bought it again for
Grenville for £262, 10s., a remarkable instance of depreciation
in price of a unique book.

The editor of this series contributed an article on this copy to
_The Library_ (vol. i. p. 106). The arms of the Borgia family
are beautifully painted on the first page of the text, and it
has usually been supposed that Cardinal Roderigo Borgia
(afterwards Pope Alexander VI.), to whom it belonged, was Abbot
of the monastery of Subiaco (where the first productions of
Sweynheym and Pannartz were executed) at the time the book was
printed. It is proved in the article, however, that the abbey
was not conferred upon Borgia by Sixtus IV. until 1471, so that
the connection is merely a coincidence. This magnificent volume
was probably executed for Borgia, whose character, as delineated
by Raphael Volaterranus, is evidently imitated from Livy’s
character of Hannibal.

---- Venet. Vindelin de Spira, 1470, two vols. folio, printed on
vellum. Sunderland, £520.

LUCANUS. Pharsalia. Romæ (Sweynheym and Pannartz), 1469, folio; fine
edition, of which only 250 copies were printed. Askew gave £6,
16s. 6d. for his copy, which was bought at his sale by De Bure
for £16; Sunderland, £38.

LUCIANUS. Opera. Florentiæ, 1496, folio, first edition. Askew gave
£2, 12s. 6d. for his copy, which was sold at the sale of his
library for £19, 8s. 6d.; Pinelli, £8, 18s. 6d.; copy on vellum
in the Sunderland library, £59.

MARTIALIS Epigrammata. Ferrara, 1471, quarto, first edition of
Martial, and the first book printed at Ferrara. Mead, £4, 14s.
6d.; Askew, £17; Combes, £60, bought for the Bodleian.

OVIDIUS. Opera. First edition. Mead, £2, 12s. 6d.; Askew, £10, 15s.

---- Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1471, three vols. folio, probably
second edition. Sunderland, £85.

---- Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1502-3, three vols. 8vo, first Aldine
edition. Sunderland, £9; copy on vellum (Askew, £63) sold to
Lord Spencer.

PLATO. Omnia Platonis Opera. Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1513, folio,
first edition. Sunderland, £31. Copy on vellum, Lord Orford gave
£105 for it; Askew purchased it for one-fifth of that price. At
his sale it was bought by Dr. William Hunter for £52, 10s. It is
now in the library at Glasgow University.

PLINIUS. Venetiis, Joannes de Spira, 1469, first edition. The
British Museum copy was purchased in 1775 for £43; Sunderland,
£82; another copy, £70.

---- Venetiis, Nicolaus Jenson, 1472. The British Museum copy was
bought at Askew’s sale for £23; printed on vellum, Sunderland,
£220.

---- Parmæ, 1476. Sunderland, £7, 15s. Douce gave Payne & Foss three
hundred guineas for his copy on vellum. It is now in the
Bodleian Library.

QUINTILIANUS. Institutionum Oratoriarum lib. xii. Romæ, 1470, folio,
printed on vellum. Sunderland, £290.

---- Institutiones Oratoriæ. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), circa
1470, folio. Paris library, £26, 5s., now in Cracherode library
(British Museum); Sunderland, £26.

SALLUSTIUS. Venetiis, Vindelin de Spira, 1470, quarto or folio.
Mead, £5, 17s.; Askew, £14, 3s. 6d.; Sunderland, £19, 10s.

SILIUS ITALICUS. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1471, folio, first
edition. Askew gave three guineas for his copy, which was bought
for the British Museum at his sale for £13, 2s. 6d.; Pinelli,
£48; Sunderland, £20, 10s.

VALERIUS MAXIMUS. Moguntinæ, per Petrum Schoyffer de Gernsheim,
1471, folio, first edition, with a date. Askew gave £4, 14s. 6d.
for his copy, which sold at his sale for £26; Sunderland, £32.

---- Another copy, printed on vellum, sold at the Sunderland sale
for £194.

VIRGILIUS. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1469 (?). Most valuable of
all the first editions. Hopetoun House, 1889, slightly damaged
and slightly wormed, £2000. The previous occasion on which a
copy was sold was at the La Vallière sale, 1784, when an
imperfect copy fetched 4101 francs.

---- Venet. Vindelin de Spira, 1470, folio, first edition with a
date, printed on vellum. A copy sold for twenty-five guineas at
Consul Smith’s sale, 1773; Sunderland, £810. A copy on paper was
sold in 1889. Hopetoun, £590.

---- Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1501, 8vo, first Aldine edition, and
the first book printed with the italic type invented by Aldus.
Sunderland, £65; copy printed on vellum (Askew, £74, 11s.) now
in the Althorpe library.

ITALIAN CLASSICS

ARIOSTO. Orlando Furioso. Ferrara, 1516, with William Cecil’s (Lord
Burghley) autograph. Sunderland, 1881, £300.

BOCCACCIO. In the catalogue of the Sunderland library (1881) eight
pages are devoted to the description of various editions of his
works. One of these, “De la Ruine des Nobles Hommes et Femmes,”
Bruges Colard Mansion, 1476, realised £920. An imperfect copy of
the celebrated first edition of the “Decameron” (C. Valdarfer,
1471) fetched £585. This was the copy possessed by Lord
Blandford when he bought the complete Roxburghe copy. The
imperfect copy was afterwards sold in the Lakelands sale (W. H.
Crawford) for £230, and is now in the British Museum.

The latter book will always hold a high position in the annals of
bibliography, from the fact that when a perfect copy in the
Roxburghe library was sold in 1812, it was bought by the Marquis
of Blandford after a hard struggle with Earl Spencer for £2260,
the highest price ever paid for a book up to that date, and for
many years afterwards. It had originally been added to the
Roxburghe library at a cost of one hundred guineas. Seven years
afterwards Messrs. Longman bought this same book at the White
Knights sale for £918 for Lord Spencer.

DANTE. First edition of Landino’s Commentary, Firenze, 1481; very
large copy, with twenty rare engravings, purple morocco, by
Lewis. Duke of Hamilton, 1884, £380.

W. H. Crawford, 1891, with the engravings by Bacio Baldini from
designs of Botticelli, £360.

PETRARCA. I Triumphi. Venetia, per Bernardino da Novara, 1488, with
two sets of six illustrations, one on metal and one on wood.
Sunderland, 1882, £1950.

---- Second Aldine edition, printed on vellum, 1514. Hanrott, £73;
Beckford, 1883, £66.

POLIPHILI Hypnerotomachia. Venetiis (Aldus), 1499. Sykes, part 2,
beautiful copy, in yellow morocco by Roger Payne, £21; Watson
Taylor (on vellum), £82, 19s.; Sir C. Price, £53, 10s.; Howell
Wills, £30; Luke Price, £49; Beckford, 1883 (Crozat’s copy, red
morocco, richly tooled), £130; Duke of Hamilton, 1884, £80; Earl
of Crawford, 1887, £86; W. H. Crawford (Lakelands), 1891 (some
of the woodcuts partially coloured, wanting leaf with imprint),
£19; Earl of Ashburnham, 1897 (Emperor Charles V.’s copy, in
stamped calf, with his figure in medallion), £151.

---- Hypnerotomachie, 1561. [French translation.] F. Hockley, 1887,
£8; W. H. Crawford (Lakelands), 1891, £6, 10s.; Earl of
Ashburnham, 1897, £15.

A copy bound with “Le Roy, De la Vicissitude des Choses,” 1577,
in blue morocco, magnificently tooled by Nicolas Eve for Louise
de Lorraine, realised £220 at the Beckford sale, 1897.

An English translation of the first book by R. D. was published
in 1592, which is excessively scarce. Mr. Andrew Lang reprinted
this in Mr. Nutt’s Tudor Library, 1890, from the copy in the
Bodleian Library. There is no copy in the British Museum, and in
the introduction to his reprint Lang tells a story against
himself. He bought at Toovey’s a poor copy of this book for £1,
but shortly afterwards he found that it wanted the last five
pages, and exchanged it for “Les Mémoires de la Reine
Marguerite,” Paris, 1661, in yellow morocco. He regretted his
exchange when he discovered its great rarity. M. Claude Popelin,
who had long been lying in wait for this book, bought this copy
at a London sale-room “à un de ces prix qu’on n’avoue pas à sa
ménagère.”

VIGILLES des Mors. Paris, par A. Verard, printed on vellum, with
thirty miniatures finely illuminated in gold and colours, blue
morocco by De Rome. This copy sold for 150 francs in the La
Vallière sale, for 220 francs in the MacCarthy, and for £20 in
Hibbert’s. In the fourth portion of the Beckford library Mr.
Quaritch bought it for £345.

TRISTAN. Chevalier de la Table Ronde. Two parts in one. Second
edition, by Verard. Fine copy, with rough leaves, morocco super
extra by Thouvenin. Duriez, 560 francs; same copy, Prince of
Essling, 505 francs; same copy, Duke of Hamilton, 1884, £108.

AUGUSTINUS. De Civitate Dei. Venet. Nic. Jenson, on vellum, first
page elaborately painted, and illuminated initials. Sunderland,
1881, £1000--bought by Mr. Quaritch amid shouts of applause.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] F. Norgate, in _The Library_, vol. iii. p. 329.

[55] Dibdin’s “Reminiscences,” vol. i. p. 206 (note).

[56] _Gomecius (Gomez) de rebus gestis a Francisco Ximinis Cisnerio_, 1569, quoted in Dibdin’s “Reminiscences,” vol. i. p. 211.