Prices of Books: An Inquiry into the Changes in the Price of Books which have occurred in England at different PeriodsWheatley, Henry B. (Henry Benjamin)
History
Prices of Books: An Inquiry into the Changes in the Price of Books which have occurred in England at different Periods
Wheatley, Henry B. (Henry Benjamin)
Books -- Prices -- History
Still rarer than this is one of the treatises in a separate form, and
printed in the next century:--
Juliana Barnes’s _Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle_. London:
Wynkyn de Worde (1532). First separate edition, unique.
In the Harleian Library, afterwards in Gulston’s collection,
who sold it to J. Ratcliffe, bought at his sale by White the
bookseller, sold by him to Mr. Haworth, at whose sale it sold
for 19 guineas (unbound). Earl of Ashburnham (1897), green
morocco, £360.
A few prices may now be given of some of the most interesting
publications of the old English press, consisting of the works of poets,
travellers, &c., all of which have greatly increased in value, and will
probably increase still more:--
_King Arthur_, W. Coplande, 1557.
Dent, £20, 9s. 6d., fine copy, in olive morocco by Lewis. H.
Perkins (1873), £120 (same copy).
Bancroft’s (T.) _Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs_, 1639.
_Rare Books and MSS._ (Sotheby, March 1897), fine uncut copy,
£42.
Barnfield’s (Richard) _Encomion of Lady Pecunia_, 1598.
Malone bought Farmer’s copy for 19s. Ouvry (1882), £105.
Bradshaw’s (Henry) _holy lyfe and history of Saynt Werburghe_
(Pynson, 1521, 4^o, pp. 294).
Only three copies known: (1) Gough’s, now in the Bodleian; (2)
Heber’s, sold in 1834 for £19, 5s.; (3) copy in Longman’s
catalogue (Bibl. Anglo-Poetica), 1815, marked £63.
The prices of Caxton’s two editions of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” are
recorded on a previous page of this chapter. Imperfect copies of
Pynson’s first and second editions were marked £25 in Longman’s
catalogue (1815). The first edition (fifty-four leaves inlaid and two
leaves in facsimile) fetched at the Heber sale £60, 18s., and at the
Earl of Ashburnham’s, £233. The second edition (1526) sold at the
Roxburghe sale for £30, 9s., and an imperfect copy at the Ashburnham
sale for £26.
Wynkyn de Worde’s edition is as valuable as a Caxton, and a fine and
perfect copy sold at the Ashburnham sale for £1000.
Cutwode’s (T.) _Caltha Poetarum; or, Bumble Bee_, 1599.
Three copies only known: (1) Malone’s, now in the Bodleian; (2)
Heber’s, from which the Roxburghe Club reprint was made, sold
in 1834 for £3, 18s.; (3) a copy which belonged successively to
Steevens, Caldecott, and Freeling. Steevens’ sale (1800), £2,
12s. 6d.; Freeling (1836), £11, 15s.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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