CHAPTER IX
PRICES OF EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE
No class of books has advanced in value of late years to so great an extent as the chief examples of old English literature, and of this class the books printed by our earliest printer, Caxton, stand in a foremost position. It is proposed in this chapter to give a general idea of the variations in price of all the books printed by Caxton which have been sold by public auction. The number attached to each entry is that given by Mr. Blades in his great work, and it is hoped that few sales of these books have been left unmentioned.[57]
We learn from Mr. Blades that there was no fixed published price for these books, but the sellers obtained the best price they could for them. In 1496 the churchwardens of St. Margaret, Westminster, were possessed of fifteen copies of “The Golden Legend,” bequeathed by Caxton. Ten of these took five years to sell. In 1496 one copy was sold for 6s. 8d., and in 1500 the price had gone down to 5s. In 1510 R. Johnson, M.D., bought five Caxtons (“Godefroy of Boleyn,” “Eneydos,” “Faytes of Arms,” “Chastising,” and “Book of Fame”) for a total expenditure of 6s. 8d. These are now in the University Library, Cambridge. In the sale of 1678, to which the name of Voetius is attached, three Caxtons sold for 7s. 10d. At the sale of Secondary Richard Smith’s library (1682) eleven Caxtons realised £3, 4s. 2d.; at Dr. Francis Bernard’s sale (1697), ten for £1, 15s. 4d. There were a considerable number of Caxtons in the Harleian Library, and several of these were duplicates. They do not appear to have sold very readily, and they occur in several of Osborne’s catalogues at a fairly uniform price of one guinea for the folios and 15s. for the quartos. At the Hon. Bryan Fairfax’s sale (1756) nine Caxtons sold for £33, 4s. At James West’s sale (1773) the price had considerably advanced, and thirty-four Caxtons realised £361, 4s. 6d. John Ratcliffe’s forty-eight Caxtons brought £236, 5s. 6d. At Dr. Richard Farmer’s sale (1798) five sold for £19, 11s. 6d. An astonishing advance in price is found at the Duke of Roxburghe’s sale (1812), where fourteen fine Caxtons brought £3002, 1s. At the sale of Stanesby Alchorne’s library in 1813 nine fetched £666, 15s. Ralph Willett’s seven brought in 1813 £1319, 16s. John Towneley’s nine sold in 1814 for £1127. The Marquis of Blandford’s (White Knights) eighteen Caxtons brought in 1819 £1316, 12s. 6d. At Watson Taylor’s sale in 1823 nine brought £319, 14s. 6d.; John Inglis (1826), thirteen for £431, 15s. 6d.; John Dent (1827), four for £162, 16s. 6d.; George Hibbert (1829), five for £339, 13s. 6d.; P. A. Hanrott (1833), six for £180, 16s.; R. Heber (1834), six for £219, 16s.; Thomas Jolley (1843-51), six for £325, 15s.; E. V. Utterson (1852), three for £116; J. D. Gardner (1854), seven for £739.
It will be seen from these totals that the present high prices did not rule at the sales in the middle of the present century.
In 1897 the total for the ten Caxtons in the first portion of the Ashburnham library reached £5622, and the six in the second portion fetched £4264.
The following list contains particulars of the sale prices of some of the chief issues of Caxton’s press:—
The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy (1).
Dr. Bernard (1698), 3s.; Bryan Fairfax (1756), £8, 8s. This perfect copy was bought by Francis Child, and at the sale of the Earl of Jersey’s library in 1885 it was sold to Mr. Quaritch for £1820.
J. West’s imperfect copy was sold in 1773 to George III. for £32, 11s., and it was perfected afterwards.
J. Lloyd of Wygfair (1816), £126. This copy was bought by G. Hibbert, and at his sale in 1829 J. Wilks bought it for £157, 10s.; at Wilks’s sale in 1847 E. V. Utterson bought it for £165; at Utterson’s sale in 1852 the Earl of Ashburnham bought it for £55—not £155, as stated by Blades. This was described in Hibbert’s and Wilks’s catalogues as having “six whole leaves and parts of four others supplied in facsimile,” but at Utterson’s sale it was stated to want no less than forty-seven leaves. At the Ashburnham sale (part 2), 1897, it was said to want forty-nine leaves. It fetched £950.