Lebr. wire 3-5.47 23125 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. EVERY amount quoted in the following pages has been actually realised at public auction within the last few years for the book against which it is set, and where two or more prices are appended it must be understood that the book has realised those amounts at auction at different times within the period in question. The valuation of the topographical works mentioned in Chapter XVI. (post p. 317, et seq.) has, however, been based, by permission, partly on the catalogues of Mr. Henry Gray, topographical and antiquarian bookseller, of 47, Leicester Square. The principles upon which books derive their value and the probability of any particular work rising or falling in the market have been carefully considered elsewhere, and as these phases of an important subject are considered to be beset with many difficulties, the reader is referred to the book in question for any information he may require. It is a fact well known to most people that condition and binding frequently regulate the market value of a book almost as much as any other consideration, * "Round and About the Bookstalls" (L. Upcott Gill, 170, Strand, W.C.). and, in extreme cases, shillings become converted into pounds merely by reason of extra quality in these respects. As a rule, however, the price realised on one occasion for any given work does not vary to any great extent from that obtained on another for the same book, and by the simple process of striking an average, a fair auction value is usually obtained. The plan adopted, therefore, has been to search for this average or normal value by comparing the prices realised at a large number of first-class sales by auction. In most instances I have given particulars of binding and condition, so that the reader will be able to form a tolerably correct estimate of the value of some thousands of works in every department of English Literature. To take the average auction value is, I am persuaded, the only way in which it is possible to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, since the alternative of comparing booksellers' price-lists is open to the grave objection that the sums asked by the dealers differ enormously, and frequently depend on a variety of extraneous circumstances which it is impossible to ascertain or classify. In a popular manual, which is necessarily limited in its scope, the great difficulty has been not so much to value the catalogued works as to decide what to reject. As a survey of English Literature this book is of course imperfect, and were it extended to a hundred times its present dimensions it would be imperfect still. All I have been able to do is to make a selection of representative works, and to classify them under the subjects to which they properly belong. THE LIBRARY MANUAL will be found useful in the hands of those who are fond of books and take an interest in collecting them, for the priced lists which form the second portion of the volume foreshadow, I think faithfully, that ideal collection which would be made, in fact, by the Book-man who had sufficient time and money at his disposal to enable him to carry out his intention of forming a high-class, allround English Library. The whole of this work has been re-written and so considerably enlarged that about 10,000 different books and editions are now catalogued. Modern works in print have not, as a rule, been referred to. Whenever the size "8vo" is quoted it is used as implying 8vo et infra (12mo, 16mo, 24mo, or less). J. H. S. |