SURTEES
(To the Editor of The London Mercury)
Sir,—In your admirable columns on Bibliography A. L. H. writes (November issue): "It is interesting to note what high prices the works of Surtees can always command." They certainly do; but is it not Leech rather than Surtees who gives them their value?
Handley Cross is doubtless immortal because of the creation of Jorrocks and James Pigg, the best portrait of the hard-riding, reckless, witty Northumbrian since Shakespeare's Hotspur, but Plain or Ringlets, Ask Mamma, and the rest are surely only valuable on account of Leech's illustrations?
I imagine that the original Handley Cross, in three volumes, 1843, London, will not fetch as much as the later and expanded Handley Cross, with Leech's illustrations, published London, 1854.
I have recently inherited a set of the five Surtees-cum-Leech issue (usually styled first editions), and I am in doubt as to what to insure them for in view of the present high prices.
Still more so in the case of other still greater treasures: early Aldines, Jensons, first editions Jonson, Spencer, Milton, etc., but above and beyond all in the case of a first folio Shakespeare, a splendid copy and intact.
According to Sir Sidney Lee, out of 140 known copies twenty only are "perfect" (with Shakespeare's portrait printed on title-page), other twenty are intact (with portrait inlaid), and the remaining 100 are all deficient in one way or another.
Well, suppose by some dreadful dispensation my library was burned down and this gem consumed, what would it cost to procure another?
My bookseller tells me to insure it for £1500, but would this procure another?
I feel certain it would not. What, then, is the proper insurance?—Yours, etc.,
A Pursuer of Books and Foxes.
[We certainly think that figure far too low, but the prices of first folios vary greatly. Perhaps some reader can give insurance information.—Editor.]