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
The number of sales seem now to have increased annually, but it was
some years before a library that could rank with Richard Smith’s was
sold. In April 1683 the books of Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester, were
sold (twenty-two years after his death) “by Samuel Carr, at his house of
the King’s Head in St. Paul’s Churchyard.” About this time auction sales
took place in various parts of the country, and Edward Millington was
largely employed as a peripatetic auctioneer. In September 1684 he sold
books at Stourbridge Fair (_Bibliotheca Sturbitchiana_). In 1686 two
sales occurred at Trumpington (Obadiah Sedgwick in March, and William
Whitwood in May) and two at Cambridge (Dr. Edmond Castell in June, and
Rev. J. Chamberlaine, of St. John’s College, at Stourbridge Fair, in
September). When we forget the change that has taken place in the value
of money, and express our surprise that rare books should only realise a
few shillings, we should note that the cost of the hire of thirteen
carts for conveying Dr. Castell’s books from Emmanuel College to the
sign of the Eagle and Child, where they were sold, was only three
shillings.[43] In 1685 and 1686 occurred the famous sales of the stock
of Richard Davis, the Oxford bookseller, which was satirised in the
_Auctio Davisiana_, noticed in an earlier chapter.
In 1682 William Cooper published a list of book-sales up to that date,
and again a fuller list in 1687, which contained a note of seventy-four
sales in the ten years 1676-86. The following note is printed on the
back of page 33 of _Catalogus Librorum Bibliothecæ viri cujusdam
Literati_, 14th February 1686-87--
“To gratifie those Gentlemen whose curiosities may lead them to make
perfect their Collection, I have caused to be printed the names of
those persons whose libraries have been sold by auction, and the
series of the time when” [1676-1686].
This list is reprinted by Hartshorne in his “Book Rarities of the
University of Cambridge,” 1829 (pp. 454-57), and it forms the text for
two excellent articles by Mr. A. W. Pollard in _Bibliographica_.
In 1687 Millington sold the valuable library of Dr. Thomas Jacomb, a
Nonconformist minister (_Bibliotheca Jacombiana_), which realised £1300;
and in February of the following year the library of a counsellor of the
Parliaments of Montpelier, which had been brought from France to be sold
in England (_Bibliotheca Mascoviana_).
T. Bentley and B. Walford sold in November 1687 an interesting library
of an anonymous but distinguished defunct--_Bibliotheca Illustrissima_,
which is described as follows in the Address to the Reader--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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