“A Child’s Garden of Verses” is another book which has doubled in value two or three times in the last few years. Gabriel Wells is now offering a copy, with a brief inscription, for three hundred dollars, having sold me not long ago, for twice this sum, a copy in which Stevenson’s writing is mingled with the type of the title-page so that it reads:—
Robert Louis Stevenson
his copy of
A Child’s Garden Of
Verses
and if it is [in] the hands of any one
else, explain it who can!
but not by the gift of
Robert Louis Stevenson
That Stevenson afterward changed his mind and gave it to “E. F. Russell, with hearty good will,” is shown by another inscription. This copy was purchased at the sale for the British Red Cross in London, shortly after the outbreak of the war. It may be some time before it is worth what I paid for it, or the price may look cheap to-morrow—who shall say?
Watching the quotations of the first editions of Stevenson is rather like looking at the quotations of stocks you haven’t got, as they recover from a panic. A point or two a day is added to their prices; but Stevenson’s move five or ten points at a time, and there has been no reaction—as yet. Only a year or two ago I paid Drake fifty dollars for a copy of “The New Arabian Nights”; and a few days ago I saw in the papers that a copy had just been sold for fifty pounds in a London auction room.[8]
