Book Collecting: A Guide for Amateurs

by J. Herbert Slater

Angling and the whole of the literature devoted to it is dealt with in Westwood's new Bibliotheca Piscatoria (1883), and swimming in R. Thomas' Bibliographical List of Works on Swimming (1868, 8vo).

The Greek and Latin Classics were at one time great favourites with all classes of collectors, but of late they have fallen considerably from their high estate. Many of the early editions, being printed by famous houses, as the editio princeps of Virgil's works was, which sold for £590 at the Hopetoun House dispersion, a few months ago, are still eagerly sought after, but not quâ classics—merely as specimens of ancient typography. Ordinary editions of Horace, Virgil, Sallust, Plato, Livy, and the rest can be bought now for a fourth or fifth part of the sum they would have cost thirty or forty years ago, and, from all appearances, they are likely to decline still further in the market. The great work on this subject is Dibdin's Rare and Valuable Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics (2 vols., 1827), which can sometimes be bought by auction for as little as £1.

Art books are so numerous, and so readily subdivided into an infinite number of classes, that they are rarely, if ever, collected as a whole. Amateurs invariably use the Universal Catalogue of Books on Art, which was compiled by order of the Lords of the Committee of the Council on Education, and published between the years 1870-7 (in 3 vols. sm. 4to). It is a work that would be exceedingly difficult to improve upon, though as time goes on it will of course be necessary to add to it.

Works on Shorthand are catalogued by J. W. Gibson (Pitman & Sons, 1887), on Magic and Witchcraft in Scribner's Bibliotheca Diabolica (New York, 1874), while books on music and all about them are noted in C. Engel's Literature of National Music (1879, 8vo).

We now come to the point when a short description of the more modern methods of book collecting becomes a matter of necessity. For some years it has been the fashion to collect not so much works of a certain class as of particular authors, chiefly those which are embellished with plates. By common consent first editions are, with a few exceptions, alone worthy of note; and it is also an axiom that where a book was originally published in parts, those parts must on no account be bound up in volume form. If the collector should be so ill advised as to bind the parts, notwithstanding the decrees of fashion to the contrary, he may save his position no little by binding in the title-pages and also the lists of advertisements, but if he neglects to do this, then his case is hopeless. This is an example of the ridiculous rules which have been laid down by a generation of autocratic book lovers, not one of whom could in all probability give a satisfactory reason for his dicta. It is, however, the rule, and will have to be followed, since great pecuniary loss is certain to follow the slightest infraction of it. Although the amateur does not buy his books to sell again, still I apprehend it is a satisfaction to know that, in case he should ever be compelled, though against his will, to sell them, he will be able to do so without losing by his bargain. Original editions of Dickens' works find a ready market, at ever-increasing prices; but in addition to his better-known books, the very titles of which have now become household words, there are others which are not so generally known, such, for example, as the Curious Dance, the Village Coquettes and many small pieces which are scattered about the pages of the magazines, and are usually classed under the heading Dickensiana. The same remarks, but even perhaps to a still greater extent, apply to Thackeray and his works, for that great author worked for many years before his genius became recognised. The bibliographer who has smoothed the way for the Dickens and Thackeray collector is Mr. C. P. Johnson, in his Hints to Collectors of Original Editions of the Works of Charles Dickens (1885), and his Hints to Collectors of Original Editions of the Works of W. M. Thackeray (1885).

The same author's Early Writings of William Makepeace Thackeray (1888) contains a list of all the pieces which can now be identified, and of the places where they are to be found, so as to put it readily in the power of the biographer, the collector, and the student to refer to them if he will. The Snob, Gownsman, National Omnibus, National Standard, The Constitutional, and Fraser's Magazine all contain essays, articles, or tales from his able pen, which, but for Mr. Johnson's patient efforts, might have been lost in course of time, when the evidence to identify them would have been wanting.

Bibliographies of the works of Carlyle, Swinburne, Ruskin, and Tennyson, as well as those of Dickens and Thackeray, have been compiled by R. H. Shepherd, and of the works of Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Lamb by Alexander Ireland.

That famous artist George Cruikshank illustrated a large number of books, all of which are eagerly sought after by certain bodies of collectors. As in the case of other illustrated books, the value mainly depends upon the earliness of impression of the plates, and the condition; and consequently original editions are more highly esteemed than those which followed. Some capacity for judging engravings is required of the amateur who makes this branch of the subject a speciality, but in other respects he will find almost everything he is likely to require in G. W. Reid's Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of George Cruikshank (London, 1871, 8vo).

Bewick collectors have an infallible guide in the Rev. T. Hugo's Bewick Collector, a Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of T. and J. Bewick (published, with the supplement, in 2 vols., 1866-8, 8vo). It is related of this author that he once found a battered and ragged specimen of a child's book got up on strong-laid paper by the famous engraver. Only one or two copies are known to exist, as Bewick found the enterprise too expensive to pay, and accordingly discontinued it. The owner of this treasure was an old woman, who had derived her infant ideas of lions and tigers from its well-thumbed leaves, and who refused to part with an old friend, though sorely and even desperately pressed to do so.

How often is the enthusiastic book hunter thwarted when his hopes are on the point of being realised; how often must he succumb to what he may consider to be nothing better than prejudice or obstinacy? This is a question which every amateur learns in time to answer for himself.