Mr. Blades makes the following remarks on this point—
“The commercial results of Caxton’s trade as a printer are unknown; but as the fees paid at his burial were far above the average, and as he evidently held a respectable position in his parish, we must conclude that his business was profitable. The preservation of the Cost Book of the Ripoli Press has already been noticed, and some extracts of interest translated therefrom. We may presume that Caxton also kept exact accounts of his trade receipts and expenditure, and if such were extant, the many doubts which now surround the operations of his printing-office would be definitely solved. We should then know the price at which he sold his books—how many pence he asked for his small quarto ‘quayers’ of poetry, or his pocket editions of the ‘Horæ’ and ‘Psalter’—how many shillings were required to purchase the thick folio volumes, such as ‘Canterbury Tales,’ ‘King Arthur,’ &c. That the price was not much dearer than that paid for good editions now we may infer from the rate at which fifteen copies of the ‘Golden Legend’ sold between 1496 and 1500. These realised an average price of 6s. 8d. each, or about £2, 13s. 4d. of modern money, a sum by no means too great for a large illustrated work. This, however, would depend on the number of copies considered necessary for an edition, which probably varied according to the nature of the work.... Some foreign printers issued as many as 275 or 300 copies of editions of the Classics, but it is not probable that Caxton ventured upon so large an impression, as the demand for his publications must have been much more restricted.”[29]
It will be noticed that Mr. Blades is wrong in saying that the copies of the “Golden Legend” were sold at an average price of 6s. 8d., and it would probably be more correct to give the equivalent amount in modern money as £4, rather than £2, 13s. 4d., but this is perhaps more a matter of opinion.
Several old priced lists of books have come down to us, and the most interesting of these are the two printed and edited by Mr. F. Madan in the first series of the Collectanea of the Oxford Historical Society, and further annotated by the late Mr. Henry Bradshaw. The first of these is an inventory, with prices of books received in 1483 for sale by John Hunt, stationer of the University of Oxford, from Magister Peter Actor and Johannes de Aquisgrano, to whom he promises to restore the books or pay the price affixed in the list; and the second is the Day-Book of John Dorne, bookseller in Oxford A.D. 1520. Mr. Bradshaw’s valuable annotations (“A Half-Century of Notes”) were printed in fac-simile of his handwriting in 1886, and afterwards included in his “Collected Papers” (1889).
Dorne’s list is of great value, as showing what was the literature sold at a great university city at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and with the much-needed explanations of Messrs. Madan and Bradshaw, it forms an important addition to our knowledge, but there is not much in it that can be quoted here with advantage. Latin theology forms the bulk of the more important books sold, and next to that Latin classics. English books are few; among the cheapest items, service-books and ballads, Christmas carols, and almanacs are common. A large proportion of the entries are marked in pence from one penny upwards, but some are in shillings, and the largest amount for one sale of several books was forty-eight shillings.
Bibliographica (vol. i. p. 252) contains “Two References to the English Book-Trade circa 1525.” The first, which is from the “Interlude of the Four Elements,” suggests that a large amount of the output of the English presses at the beginning of the sixteenth century was made up of ephemeral publications—
“Now so it is in our Englyshe tonge,
Many one there is that can but rede and wryte,
For his pleasure wyll oft presume amonge
New bokys to compyle and balades to indyte,