Rare Books.
There is perhaps no field of inquiry concerning literature in which so large an amount of actual mis-information or of ignorance exists as that of the rarity of many books. The makers of second-hand catalogues are responsible for much of this, in describing the books which they wish to sell as "rare," "very scarce," etc., but more of it proceeds from absolute ignorance of the book-markets of the world. I have had multitudes of volumes offered for sale whose commercial value was hardly as many cents as was demanded in dollars by their ill-informed owners, who fancied the commonest book valuable because they "had never seen another copy." No one's ideas of the money value of any book are worth anything, unless he has had long experimental knowledge of the market for books both in America and in Europe.
What constitutes rarity in books is a question that involves many particulars. Thus, a given book may be rare in the United States which is abundant in London; or rare in London, when common enough in Germany. So books may be rare in one age which were easily found in another: and again, books on certain subjects may be so absorbed by public demand when events excite interest in that subject, as to take up most of the copies in market, and enhance the price of the remainder. Thus, Napoleon's conquering career in Egypt created a great demand for all books on Egypt and Africa. The scheme for founding a great French colony in Louisiana raised the price of all books and pamphlets on that region, which soon after fell into the possession of the United States. President Lincoln's assassination caused a demand for all accounts of the murder of the heads of nations. Latterly, all books on Cuba, the West Indies, and the Philippines have been in unprecedented demand, and dealers have raised the prices, which will again decline after the recent public interest in them has been supplanted by future events.
There is a broad distinction to be drawn between books which are absolutely rare, and those which are only relatively scarce, or which become temporarily rare, as just explained. Thus, a large share of the books published in the infancy of printing are rare; nearly all which appeared in the quarter century after printing began are very rare; and several among these last are superlatively rare. I may instance the Mazarin Bible of Gutenberg and Schoeffer (1455?) of which only twenty-four copies are known, nearly all in public libraries, where they ought to be; the Mentz Psalter of the same printers, 1457, the first book ever printed with a date; and the first edition of Livy, Rome [1469] the only copy of which printed on vellum is in the British Museum Library.
One reason of the scarcity of books emanating from the presses of the fifteenth century is that of many of them the editions consisted of only two hundred to three hundred copies, of which the large number absorbed in public libraries, or destroyed by use, fire or decay, left very few in the hands of booksellers or private persons. Still, it is a great mistake to infer that all books printed before A. D. 1500 are rare. The editions of many were large, especially after about 1480, many were reprinted in several editions, and of such incunabula copies can even now be picked up on the continent at very low prices.
Contrary to a wide-spread belief, mere age adds very little to the value of any book, and oft-times nothing at all. All librarians are pestered to buy "hundred year old" treatises on theology or philosophy, as dry as the desert of Sahara, on the ground that they are both old and rare, whereas such books, two hundred and even three hundred years old, swarm in unsalable masses on the shelves of London and provincial booksellers at a few pence per volume. The reason that they are comparatively rare in this country is that nobody wants them, and so they do not get imported.
A rare book is, strictly speaking, only one which is found with difficulty, taking into view all the principal book markets of various countries. Very few books printed since 1650 have any peculiar value on account of their age. Of many books, both old and new, the reason of scarcity is that only a few copies actually remain, outside of public libraries, and these last, of course, are not for sale. This scarcity of copies is produced by a great variety of causes, most of which are here noted.
(1) The small number of the books originally printed leads to rarity. This is by no means peculiar to early impressions of the press: on the contrary, of some books printed only last year not one tenth as many exist as of a multitude of books printed four centuries ago. Not only privately printed books, not designed for publication, but some family or personal memoirs, or original works circulated only among friends, and many other publications belong to this class of rarities. The books printed at private presses are mostly rare. Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill press produced some thirty works from 1757 to 1789, in editions varying from fifty to six hundred copies. The Lee Priory press of Sir E. Brydges printed many literary curiosities, none of which had more than one hundred impressions. Most of the editions of the Shakespearean and other critical essays of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps were limited to forty copies, or even less. The genealogical and heraldic imprints of Sir Thomas Phillipps, at the Middle Hill press, 1819-59, numbering some hundreds of different works, were mostly confined to twenty copies each, and some to only six copies. Some of them are as rare as many manuscripts, of which several copies have been made, and sell at prices dictated by their scarcity. Most of them are in the Library of Congress. The Kelmscott press of William Morris printed in sumptuous style, improved upon the finest models of antique typography, a number of literary works, which now bring enhanced prices. Of the many historical and literary publications of the Roxburghe Club, the Percy Society, the Maitland, the Abbotsford, and the Bannatyne Clubs abroad, only thirty to one hundred copies were printed. Of those of the Prince Society, the Grolier Club, and others in America, only from 150 to 300 copies were printed, being for subscribers only. Rarity and enhanced prices necessarily result in all these cases. Of some books, only five to ten copies have been printed, or else, out of fifty or more printed, all but a very few have been ruthlessly destroyed, in order to give a fanciful value to the remainder. In these extreme instances, the rarity commonly constitutes almost the sole value of the work.
(2) Even where many copies have been printed, the destruction of the greater part of the edition has rendered the book very rare. Printing offices and book binderies are peculiarly subject to fires, and many editions have thus been consumed before more than a few copies have been issued. The great theological libraries edited by the Abbé J. P. Migne, the Patrologie Grecque, et Latine, owe their scarcity and advanced prices to a fire which consumed the entire remainder of the edition. All the copies of a large edition of "Twenty years among our savage Indians," by J. L. Humfreville, were destroyed by fire in a Hartford printing office in 1899, except two, which had been deposited in the Library of Congress, to secure the copyright. The whole edition of the Machina coelestis of Hevelius was burned, except the few copies which the author had presented to friends before the fire occurred. The earlier issues in Spanish of the Mexican and Peruvian presses prior to 1600 are exceedingly rare. And editions of books printed at places in the United States where no books are now published are sought for their imprint alone and seldom found.
(3) Many books have become rare because proscribed and in part destroyed by governmental or ecclesiastical authority. This applies more especially to the ages that succeeded the application of printing to the art of multiplying books. The freedom of many writers upon politics and popular rights led to the suppression of their books by kings, emperors or parliaments. At the same time, books of church history or doctrinal theology which departed, in however slight a degree, from the standard of faith proclaimed by the church, were put in the Index Expurgatorius, or list of works condemned in whole or in part as heretical and unlawful to be read. A long and melancholy record of such proscriptions, civil and ecclesiastical, is found in Gabriel Peignot's two volumes—Dictionnaire des livres condamnés au feu, supprimés, ou censurés, etc. Works of writers of genius and versatile ability were thus proscribed, until it gave rise to the sarcasm among the scholars of Europe, that if one wanted to find what were the books best worth reading, he should look in the Index Expurgatorius. It appears to have been quite forgotten by those in authority that persecution commonly helps the cause persecuted, and that the best way to promote the circulation of a book is to undertake to suppress it. This age finds itself endowed with so many heretics that it is no longer possible to find purchasers at high prices for books once deemed unholy. Suppressed passages in later editions lead to a demand for the uncastrated copies which adds an element of enhanced cost in the market.
