Prices of Books. Wheatley Henry Benjamin
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That good books are still very cheap, particularly those which it is necessary to possess. So much is talked about the high prices which books fetch, that many are led to believe that he must be a rich man who commences to collect a library; but this is not so, for many good books in good condition can be bought for a few shillings; in fact, some of the best library books, well bound, do not range at more than ten shillings per octavo volume, and this cannot be called a high price. Ordinary collectors must make up their minds to do without Mazarin Bibles and first folios of Shakespeare, and they will find that life can be lived without these expensive luxuries.
In conclusion, it is necessary to strike a note of warning respecting the bad paper which is used for some books, and which render these books quite worthless in a few years. Old books were made to last; the materials used—paper and ink—were of the very best, but many books of the present day are made of bad materials, and contain within them the elements of decay. Lately a German Commission investigated this subject, and for their purpose took out from the Berlin Library one hundred volumes. They classified the paper upon which these books were printed under the four headings of (1) good; (2) medium; (3) bad; (4) very bad. About five books came under the first two classes, and the remainder were about equally divided between the third and fourth classes. Can we with any confidence claim a better average for English books? If not, the future of our modern books is a dark one.
CHAPTER II
SELLERS OF BOOKS
It has been frequently remarked that a history of bookselling would be a valuable addition to our literature, but such a book would require extensive research. In place of this a history of some booksellers has been produced; but although the volumes of Mr. Curwen and Mr. Roberts are interesting in themselves, they do not go far to fill the vacant space still open for a history of bookselling. Mr. G. H. Putnam has gathered together much curious information in his “Authors and their Public in Ancient Times,” and “Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages,” which, notwithstanding some errors, form certainly a useful contribution towards this history. The sellers of books have greatly changed their habits with the altered conditions of their trade. Among the Greeks there were public shops for the sale of manuscripts, and in them the learned met together to hear the manuscripts read. In Rome the general mart for books was to be found in the district devoted to the bibliopole, and in his shop advertisements of new works were stuck up.
At the break up of the Roman Empire the producers of books were mostly found in the monasteries, and booksellers were sellers of Paternosters, Aves, &c., as well as of books.
In the thirteenth century the stationarii not only sold books, but accumulated much money by lending them at high rates. Bookstalls were sometimes placed in the church porch, and one of the doors of Rouen Cathedral is still called le portail des libraires.
When manuscripts were superseded by printed books the business of selling books naturally became a more important concern, although the London company established by printers and publishers was called the Company of Stationers. At first one man often undertook all the varieties of book production and bookselling, but gradually the four broad divisions of printers, publishers, second-hand booksellers, and auctioneers came into existence.
We know but little of the early publishers, although much attention is now being paid to the lives and works of the old book producers, and we may hope to have in course of time much material for a history of them. The great houses founded in the eighteenth and at the beginning of the present century are still with us, and large additions have been made of late years to the ever-increasing roll. At all events, there is no sign of a failure of published books; whether they are all worthy to be published is another matter.
Great changes have been made in the publishing business, and one of the chief of these is the frequent sale of remainders of new books. It is worth a remark in passing that good books which have been sold off often become scarce and more valuable than those which have only been sold in the ordinary way. James Lackington was one of the first to make a great business out of the sale of remainders; he was followed by Tegg, and these two men did much to cheapen and popularise literature.
Charles Knight will ever be remembered with honour as the great pioneer in the cheapening of good literature. The excellence of his shilling volumes was a marvel when they were first published, and even now it would be difficult to find their equal. Knight had a great belief in the adequacy of the penny as a price for a number of a book. He published large quantities of books at a penny a number—as one of the first cheap periodicals—the Penny Magazine, and the first of cheap encyclopædias—the Penny Cyclopædia. How much good has been done by the large issues of such excellent books as Knight’s weekly and monthly volumes, the Libraries of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, Constable’s Miscellany, Murray’s Family Library, Home and Colonial Library, and Bohn’s Libraries!—books all of which are worthy of a place in the library, and not like too many of the cheap books of the present day, books to be read and then thrown aside.
In taking note of some of the old second-hand booksellers, special mention must be made of Joseph Kirton of St. Paul’s Churchyard, whose sign was “The King’s Arms,” because he was Samuel Pepys’s bookseller—“my poor Kirton,” as the latter calls him when he was ruined by the Fire of London. Pepys tells us that “Kirton was utterly undone by the loss of all his stock, so that from being worth seven or eight thousand pounds, he was made two or three thousand pounds worse than nothing.” (See “Diary,” October 5, 1666.) The poor bookseller did not live long after his great loss, for he died in October 1667. Pepys records an interesting instance of the rise in price of one of the books burnt in the great fire. On March 20, 1666-67 he writes: “It is strange how Rycaut’s ‘Discourse of Turky,’ which before the fire I was asked but 8s. for, there being all but twenty-two or thereabouts burned, I did now offer 20s., and he demands 50s., and I think I shall give it him, though it be only as a monument of the fire.” On April 8, 1667, he gives us some fuller particulars, which are of interest: “So I away to the Temple, to my new bookseller’s; and there I did agree for Rycaut’s late ‘History of the Turkish Policy,’ which costs me 55s.; whereas it was sold plain before the late fire for 8s., and bound and coloured as this for 20s., for I have bought it finely bound and truly coloured, all the figures, of which there was but six books done so, whereof the King and Duke of York, and Duke of Monmouth and Lord Arlington had four. The fifth was sold, and I have bought the sixth.” There is no copy of this edition in the British Museum.
John Dunton, the erratic bookseller and projector of the eighteenth century, has left us in his “Life and Errors” a most curious account of the booksellers of his time, who are all, oddly enough, either handsome themselves or have beautiful wives. Nearly all are also eminent Christians; in fact, we are told that of three hundred booksellers trading in country towns the author knew not of one knave or blockhead amongst them all.
Thomas Osborne, the most celebrated bookseller of his day, is interesting to us as having had the honour of being knocked down by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Whether or no he deserved such a summary punishment we cannot now tell, but although he appears to have been more of a business man than a literary character, what he did is sufficient to place him in an honourable position in the history of English bibliography. He bought the finest library of the time, and sold it piecemeal at reasonable prices. He employed two of the most capable men of his day—Johnson and Oldys—to make a Catalogue, which does credit to all concerned in its production, and he did not make much money by the transaction. The amount he gave for the Harley library in 1742 (£13,000) was less by £5000 than the binding of a portion of the library had cost, but had he given more he would certainly have been a loser. Osborne projected a Catalogue, in which it was proposed “that the books shall be distributed into distinct classes, and every class arranged with some regard to the age of the writers; that every book shall be accurately described; that the peculiarities of the editions shall be remarked, and observations from the authors of literary history occasionally interspersed, that by this Catalogue posterity may be informed of the excellence and value of this great collection, and thus promote the knowledge of scarce books and elegant editions.” Maittaire drew up the scheme of arrangement, and wrote the Latin dedication to Lord Carteret, who was then Secretary of State. Dr. Johnson wrote the “Proposals” for printing the Bibliotheca