Prices of Books / An Inquiry into the Changes in the Price of Books which have occurred in England at different Periods

by Henry B. Wheatley

The sale of the Hamilton manuscripts to a foreign Government naturally caused those who were interested in these matters to feel great anxiety lest the Earl of Ashburnham’s manuscripts, which it was known the owner wished to sell, should also be sent abroad. This collection consisted of upwards of three thousand manuscripts in about four thousand volumes, and were made up of purchases from the Duke of Buckingham (Stowe) and M. Libri; and of an Appendix consisting of separate manuscripts purchased from time to time by the late Lord Ashburnham.

(1) The Stowe collection grew out of the library of MSS. formed by Thomas Astle, the palæographer, and Keeper of the Records in the Tower. Astle directed by his will that his collection should be offered to the Marquis of Buckingham on certain specified terms, one of which was the payment of the sum of £500. This amount was not of course any measure of their value, and the bequest was made in gratitude to the Grenville family for favours which Astle had received from them. A room was built at Stowe by Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Soane to receive the collection, in which were charters, registers, wardrobe accounts, inventories, correspondence, and many items of the greatest historical value. O’Conor’s Irish MSS. and the State Papers of Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the reign of Charles II., afterwards found a home at Stowe. In April 1849 the Marquis of Chandos wrote to Sir Robert Peel, stating that he had recently had offers from private parties for the Stowe manuscripts, and offering them to the British Museum. Sir Frederick Madden valued the collection at £8300, but he was only authorised to treat with Lord Chandos for the Irish manuscripts separately, and to seek for further information respecting other portions of the collection. In the meantime, however, the whole number were sold to Lord Ashburnham for £8000.

(2) Libri collection. In June 1846 the Trustees of the British Museum applied for Treasury sanction to the expenditure of £9000 in the purchase of the Libri manuscripts, but this was refused. In September following renewed application was made for £6600 for the collection, less the Napoleon papers valued at £1000. The Treasury allowed £6000 with commission to agents, but the negotiation failed, and Lord Ashburnham obtained the MSS. for £8000.

(3) Barrois collection, chiefly consisting of French romances and poems, was offered to the British Museum in 1848 for £6000. It was examined by the Keeper of the Manuscripts, who recommended the purchase, but apparently no application was made to the Treasury, and the collection was soon afterwards sold to Lord Ashburnham for the same amount.

(4) Appendix of MSS. collected separately by Bertram, fourth Earl of Ashburnham, among which were some splendid illuminated manuscripts.

With respect to some of these manuscripts a difficulty had arisen, owing to M. Léopold Delisle’s claim that a large number of the manuscripts in the Libri collection had been stolen from libraries in France by Libri while holding the office of Inspector-General of Libraries. M. Delisle also alleged that at least sixty of the Barrois manuscripts were stolen from the Paris National Library. In November 1879 Lord Ashburnham offered to treat for the sale of his library of printed books and manuscripts with the Museum alone, or jointly with the French Government, naming £160,000 as the price for the whole, and stated that he had received an offer to that amount “from another quarter.” The Trustees then asked whether Lord Ashburnham would treat for the manuscripts alone, and his answer in January 1880 was that he had ascertained that the offer he had received of £160,000 for the whole library from a private individual was intended for private speculation, and that the collection was worth a great deal more. This amount, which comes to about £500 for each manuscript, seems to be very large, but competent authorities have agreed to the valuation. At any rate, the Treasury was not prepared to buy the whole at such a price, and the Principal Librarian treated for the Stowe collection alone, the price of which Lord Ashburnham fixed at £30000.[26] In the end these were purchased for the nation.

For many years the late Sir Thomas Phillipps was an omnivorous collector of manuscripts, and his collections were vast. They are gradually being sold by auction. Several portions have passed under the hammer of Messrs. Sotheby, and others are still to follow.

A very fine collection of illuminated manuscripts was gathered in a very short period by William Morris. It is fortunate that a collection made by one who knew so well what to buy is not to be dispersed or taken out of the kingdom. As long as it remains intact it will be a worthy monument of an enthusiastic lover of art who, while teaching the present age, was not forgetful of the history of the earlier workers in the same spirit.

We cannot register prices of such priceless manuscripts as the Gospels of St. Cuthbert, for two centuries at Lindisfarne, and now among the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum, or the Book of Kells at Trinity College, Dublin—both of the seventh century; but some few books of great interest which have been sold by auction may be mentioned here. The chief of these is the splendid manuscript of the Bible in the British Museum, said to have been presented by Alcuin to Charlemagne. The vicissitudes of this book are very remarkable. It was confiscated during the French Revolution, and eventually came into the possession of M. Speyr Passavant of Basle, who unavailingly offered it for a large sum to the chief libraries of Europe. It was offered to the Trustees of the British Museum, first for £12,000, then for £8000, and lastly for £6500. The unfounded claims of the proprietor, who appears to have been very much of a charlatan, appear to have damaged the repute of the MS., and it remained on his hands. On 27th April 1836 the volume was put up to auction at Evans’s rooms, and was described in six pages of a catalogue in which it was the chief lot. It was catalogued as the Emperor Charlemagne’s Bible—a manuscript on vellum by Alcuin, completed A.D. 800, presented to Charlemagne A.D. 801 at the ceremony of his coronation, and mentioned in his will. The date is not undisputed, and it is supposed by some to be of about forty years later. The statement that this Bible is mentioned in the Emperor’s will is absolutely denied. The price registered in Evans’s sale catalogue is £1500, and the purchaser is given as Scordet, but the book was really bought in, and it is said that few of the biddings for it were genuine. After this failure fresh overtures were made to the British Museum, and in the end it was bought for that library for £750, which must be considered a small price for so splendid and interesting a book. There was some correspondence on this Bible in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in which Sir Frederick Madden took part. These letters are reprinted in Gomme’s Gentleman’s Magazine Library (“Literary Curiosities,” 1888, pp. 234-64). Another historical manuscript of particular beauty which has been several times sold by auction, and now safely reposes at the British Museum, is the famous so-called Bedford Missal (really Book of Hours), written and illuminated for John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France under Henry VI., to whom he presented the book in the year 1430. It passed into the hands of Henry II. of France, and long subsequently into those of Lady Worsley (widow of Sir Robert Worsley), from whom it was purchased by the Earl of Oxford, who bequeathed it to his daughter, the Duchess of Portland. At the latter’s sale in 1786 it was bought by James Edwards the bookseller for £213, 3s. At Edwards’s sale in 1815 it was bought for £687, 15s. by the Marquis of Blandford, who afterwards sold it to Mr. Broadley. At Broadley’s sale in 1833 Sir John Tobin bought it for £1100. Sir John’s son sold it to the bookseller from whom the British Museum purchased it in 1852.

Two instances of most interesting manuscripts sold at very inadequate prices may here be recorded. One of the most distinguished among the Ashburnham manuscripts was one known as the Albani Missal. It is a manuscript of offices, and was executed apparently for Alemanno Salviati, gonfalonier of Florence and brother-in-law of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and given by him to one of his relatives of the house of Baroncelli. This beautiful volume contains five full-page miniatures, each the work of a master. The first is by the hand of Amico Aspertini, of Bologna, the pupil of Francia; the next is attributed to Lorenzo di Credi; the third and fourth of high excellence, though unassigned; and the fifth by Perugino, signed “Petrus Perusinus pinxit.” For this artistic treasure Mr. James Dennistoun gave £20 in Rome in the year 1838. When he had purchased it he found that opposition to its leaving Italy would be made on the part of the Roman authorities, so he had it unbound and divided, and got it sent to England privately a few pages at a time. He afterwards sold it to Lord Ashburnham for £700. These facts were printed in the Times in 1883 by a cousin of Mr. Dennistoun.