XIII.-GREEK AND LATIN CLASSICS: Eschylus, Esop, Anacreon, Aristo- phanes, Aristotle, Aulus Gellius, Cæsar, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, Cicero, Demosthenes, Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes Laertius, Epictetus, Euclid, Euripides, Herodotus, Homer, Horace, Juvenal, Livy, Lucretius, Martial, Nepos, Ovid, Pindar, Plato, Pliny (senior and junior), Plutarch, Quin- tilian, Sallust, Seneca, Sophocles, LIST OF CONTRACTIONS Frequently used in auctioneers' and booksellers' catalogues and in the following pages. THE LIBRARY MANUAL. SECTION I. ON BOOKS GENERALLY. CHAPTER I. The Rise and Fall in the Value of Books-Why one Book, though of the same Edition, is sometimes worth more than another (Bad Condition, "Cropping," Imperfect and "Made-up" Books, Leaves in Fac-simile, “Laying down," Worm-Holes, Foxed Plates, Reprints, Bound-up Parts). In order to estimate the value of books with any degree of correctness, considerable experience, combined with a thorough knowledge of the market, is required; and as none, except those whose business it is, can be expected to spend the large amount of time necessary to acquire the requisite information, it follows that the booksellers are the people who are chiefly competent to handle this difficult branch of bibliography. It is the booksellers who fix the price at which a book shall be sold, and they base their calculations primarily on the laws of supply and demand. B When the public cease to care for the works of any particular author, or when they, sometimes a little capriciously, are disposed to look favourably upon those of a hitherto unknown man, the market gradually changes in exact accordance with the spirit of the times. Hence, a bookseller's catalogue of some twenty years ago bears but little resemblance, so far as quoted prices are concerned, to a similar catalogue of to-day. The market prices, which in process of time have fallen to their natural level, are retained in equilibrium simply by the fact that the dealers are not merely in the habit of buying from the public to sell to the public again at an increased price; they buy from one another, and if any particular dealer is too ignorant to make the most of his stock, it is a matter of certainty that others will transact his business for him, and, of course, to his loss; or, in other words, they will buy the books which he has undervalued, and reap the profit themselves. It thus happens that dealers are able, to a great extent, to keep the market firm, and at prices which do not vary so much as the casual purchaser is apt to suppose. The condition of a book may, of course, materially affect its value, and on this phase of the subject I shall have more to say later on. Assuming that the dealers regulate the prices of books, it must never be forgotten that the public are in reality masters of the situation, and that their tastes and inclinations are accurately reflected in the booksellers' catalogues. Anyone who can truly read such a document, will be able to gauge very correctly the literary taste of the day, and, by a comparison with older catalogues, follow the waves of thought and opinion through all the changes which time has brought about. We have now two main propositions: First, that popular taste points out what books to buy and what to avoid; and, secondly, that the booksellers regulate their prices |