Tennyson.—The first editions of Tennyson’s Poems bring high prices, and the scarcest is the famous “Poems by Two Brothers,” 1827, published for 5s., and large paper for 7s. The present value of the former is about £15 to £10.
The original MS. was sold in December 1892 to Messrs. Macmillan & Bowes of Cambridge for £480. After a facsimile had been taken, it was resold to an American collector.
Dickens.—“Sunday under Three Heads” was one of the first of the novelist’s works to sell for a high price. As it is a very small book, it is not saying much to describe it as selling for its weight in gold; in point of fact, it sells for more. Mr. F. C. Kitton gives the market value of the various novels in his “Novels of Charles Dickens,” 1897. The first edition of the “Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi” sold in July 1897 at Sotheby’s (Jack, Halliday, &c.) for £8, 17s. 6d.
Thackeray.—Thackerayana is very high priced, and the following two instances of sales in 1897 show that the tendency is still upwards:—Two incomplete sets of “The Snob,” ten numbers and thirteen numbers, 1829-30, fetched at Sotheby’s (Parlane & Dasent) £89. The eleven numbers complete, with seventeen numbers of the “Gownsman,” sold at the Mansfield-Mackenzie sale, 1889, for £25.
“The Fox and the Cat,” final proof-sheets of a story apparently intended for the Cornhill Magazine, but never published, revised by the author, with numerous corrections and additions in his autograph, sold by Sotheby’s in March 1897 (Rare Books and MSS.) for £45, bought by Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co.
The price of the first editions of Sir Walter Scott’s novels have been long in rising, but good fresh copies fetch a good price now.
The most remarkable price for a three-volume novel was obtained in July 1897 at Sotheby’s (Jack, Halliday, &c.), when the first edition of “Jane Eyre” sold for seventeen guineas.
The question naturally occurs, Will such prices as this continue? but it is a question very difficult to answer. All that can be said is, that in this class of books there is the most uncertainty as to the high prices being sustained.
Depreciation is a factor which must be taken into consideration, but it is not at present very widespread. It is quite easy to understand why editions of the classics and Thomas Hearne’s editions of “Chronicles,” &c., have gone down in price, because the publication of superior texts has partially superseded them; but one can scarcely explain why the set of “Byzantine Historians” should fall so much in price, for these ponderous volumes have not been superseded. At the Hamilton sale in 1884 a fine large paper set of these “Historians,” 1645-1777, eighteen volumes in red morocco by Ruelle, and five in calf, only brought £4, 10s.
Mezeray’s Histoire de France, 3 vols. folio, bound in blue morocco by Derome, which sold formerly for £105, only sold for £33 at the Beckford sale.