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

—— Noctes. Venetiis, per Nicolaum Jenson, 1472, folio. Mead, £2, 12s. 6d.; Askew, £11, 10s.; Sunderland, £13, 10s.

Homerus. Opera Omnia. Florentiæ sumpt. Bern. et Nerii Nerliorum, 1488, two vols. folio, first edition. The British Museum copy was purchased for £17; Wodhull, £200; Sunderland, £48.

—— Homeri Odyssea Græce. Florentiæ, 1488, first edition. Duke of Hamilton, 1884, very large and fine copy, red morocco, by Clarke & Bedford, £25.

—— On vellum (one of the four known to exist). Dent, part 1, 1827, £142, 16s.

Horatius. Opera. 1470, small folio, first edition, with a date. Sunderland, £29. The Naples edition of 1474 is called by Dibdin “the rarest classical volume in the world,” and it was chiefly to possess this book that Earl Spencer bought the famous library of the Duke of Cassano.

Justinus. Venetiis, per Nicolaum Jenson, 1470, small folio, first edition. Mead, £3, 3s.; Askew, £13, 13s. (sold to the British Museum); Pinelli, £18, 7s. 6d.; Sunderland, £15.

Juvenalis et Persius. Editio Princeps. Dr. Askew gave £3 for his copy; at his sale it was purchased by the British Museum for thirteen guineas.

Livius. The first edition, printed at Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz, as is supposed, in 1469. The only copy printed on vellum which is known to exist is now in the Grenville Library (British Museum). It was for years in the possession of the Benedictine Library at Milan. It was bought by Sykes at J. Edwards’s sale (1815) for £903. At Sykes’s sale (1824) it was bought by Payne and Foss for £472, 10s. These booksellers sold it to Dent, and at Dent’s sale (1827) bought it again for Grenville for £262, 10s., a remarkable instance of depreciation in price of a unique book.

The editor of this series contributed an article on this copy to The Library (vol. i. p. 106). The arms of the Borgia family are beautifully painted on the first page of the text, and it has usually been supposed that Cardinal Roderigo Borgia (afterwards Pope Alexander VI.), to whom it belonged, was Abbot of the monastery of Subiaco (where the first productions of Sweynheym and Pannartz were executed) at the time the book was printed. It is proved in the article, however, that the abbey was not conferred upon Borgia by Sixtus IV. until 1471, so that the connection is merely a coincidence. This magnificent volume was probably executed for Borgia, whose character, as delineated by Raphael Volaterranus, is evidently imitated from Livy’s character of Hannibal.