Illustrated books of certain periods are also much in request, and with the exception of a few which early celebrity has prevented becoming rare have increased inordinately in price. The primitive woodcuts in incunabula are now almost too highly appreciated, and while the Nuremburg Chronicle (1493) seldom fetches more than £30 or the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499) more than £120, rarer books are priced in hundreds. The best books on the subject are: for Italy, Lippmann’s Wood Engraving in Italy in the 15th Century (1888), Kristeller’s Early Florentine Woodcuts (1897), the duc de Rivoli’s (Prince d’Essling’s) Bibliographie des livres à figures vénitiens 1469-1525 (1892, new edition 1906); for Germany, Muther’s Die deutsche Bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance (1884); for Holland and Belgium, Sir W.M. Conway’s The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the 15th Century (1884); for France the material will all be found in Claudin’s Histoire de l’imprimerie en France (1900, &c.). Some information on the illustrated books of the early 16th century is given in Butsch’s Die Bücherornamentik der Renaissance (1878), but the pretty French books of the middle of the century and the later Dutch and English copper-engraved book illustrations (for the latter see Colvin’s Early Engraving and Engravers in England, 1905) have been imperfectly appreciated. This cannot be said of the French books of the 18th century chronicled by H. Cohen, Guide de l’amateur de livre à gravures du XVIIIe siècle (5th ed., 1886), much of the same information, with a little more about English books, being given in Lewine’s Bibliography of Eighteenth Century Art and Illustrated Books (1898). English books with coloured illustrations, for which there has arisen a sudden fashion, are well described in Martin Hardie’s English Colour Books (1906). Bewick’s work has been described by Mr Austin Dobson.
Appreciation of finely printed books has seldom extended much beyond the 15th century. In addition to the works mentioned in the article on incunabula(q.v.), note may be made of Humphrey’s Masterpieces of the Early Printers and Engravers (1870), while Lippmann’s Druckschriften des XV. bis XVIII Jahrhunderts (1884-1887) covers, though not very fully, the later period.
Among books which make an intellectual appeal to the collectors may be classed all works of historical value which have not been reprinted, or of which the original editions are more authentic, or convincing, than modern reprints. It is evident that these cover a vast field, and that the collector in taking possession of any corner of it is at once the servant and rival of historical students. Lord Crawford’s vast collections of English, Scottish and Irish proclamations and of papal bulls may be cited as capital instances of the work which a collector may do for the promotion of historical research, and the philological library brought together by Prince Lucien Bonaparte (An Attempt at a Catalogue by V. Collins, published 1894) and the Foxwell collection of early books on political economy (presented to the university of London by the Goldsmiths’ Company) are two other instances of recent date. Much collecting of this kind is now being carried on by the libraries of institutes and societies connected with special professions and studies, but there is ample room also for private collectors to work on these lines.
Of books which appeal to a collector’s imagination the most obvious examples are those which can be associated with some famous person or event. A book which has belonged to a king or queen (more especially one who, like Mary queen of Scots, has appealed to popular sympathies), or to a great statesman, soldier or poet, which bears any mark of having been valued by him, or of being connected with any striking incident in his life, has an interest which defies analysis. Collectors themselves have a natural tenderness for their predecessors, and a copy of a famous work is all the more regarded if its pedigree can be traced through a long series of book-loving owners. Hence the production of such works as Great Book-Collectors by Charles and Mary Elton (1893), English Book-Collectors by W.Y. Fletcher (1902) and Guigard’s Nouvel armorial du bibliophile (1890). Books condemned to be burnt, or which have caused the persecution of their authors, have an imaginative interest of another kind, though one which seems to have appealed more to writers of books than to collectors. As has already been noted, most of the books specially valued by collectors make a double or triple appeal to the collecting instinct, and the desire to possess first editions may be accounted for partly by their positive superiority over reprints for purposes of study, partly by the associations which they can be proved to possess or which imagination creates for them. The value set on them is at least to some extent fanciful. It would be difficult, for instance, to justify the high prices paid by collectors of the days of George III. for the first printed editions of the Greek and Latin classics. With few exceptions these are of no value as texts, and there are no possible associations by which they can be linked with the personality of their authors. It may be doubted whether any one now collects them save as specimens of printing, though no class of books which has once been prized ever sinks back into absolute obscurity. On the other hand the prestige of the first editions of English and French literary masterpieces has immensely increased. A first folio Shakespeare (1623) was in 1906 sold separately for £3000, and the MacGeorge copies of the first four folios (1623, 1632, 1663-1664 and 1685) fetched collectively the high price of £10,000. The quarto editions of Shakespeare plays have appreciated even more, several of these little books, once sold at 6d. apiece, having fetched over £1000, while the unknown and unique copy of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus, discovered in Sweden, speedily passed to an American collector for £2000. Information as to early editions of famous English books will be found in Lowndes’ Bibliographer’s Manual, in Hazlitt’s Handbook to the Popular Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain from the Invention of Printing to the Restoration (1867) and his subsequent Collections and Notes (1876-1903), and as to more recent books in Slater’s Early Editions, a bibliographical survey of the works of some popular modern authors (1894), while French classics have found an excellent chronicler in Jules Le Petit (Bibliographie des principales éditions originales d’ècrivains français du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, 1888).
In most cases there is a marked falling off in the interest with which early editions other than the first are regarded, and consequently in the prices paid for them, though important changes in the text give to the edition in which they first occur some shadow of the prestige attaching to an original issue. One of the recognized byways of book-collecting, however, used to be the collection of as many editions as possible of the same work. When this result in the acquisition of numerous late editions of no value for the text its only usefulness would appear to be the index it may offer to the author’s popularity. But in translations of the Bible, in liturgical works, and in editions published during the author’s life the aid offered to the study of the development of the final text by a long row of intermediate editions may be very great.
Another instance in which imagination reinforces the more positive interest a book may possess is in the case of editions which can be connected with the origin, diffusion or development of printing. Piety suggests that book-lovers should take a special interest in the history of the art which has done so much for their happiness, and in this respect they have mostly shown themselves religious. The first book printed in any town is reasonably coveted by local antiquaries, and the desire to measure the amount and quality of the work of every early printer has caused the preservation of thousands of books which would otherwise have perished. (See [Incunabula].)
The financial side of book-collecting may be studied in Slater’s Book-Prices Current, published annually since 1887, and in Livingston’s American Book Prices Current, and in the same author’s Auction Prices of Books (1905). While largely influenced by fashion the prices given for books are never wholly unreasonable. They are determined, firstly by the positive or associative interest which can be found in the book itself, secondly by the infrequency with which copies come into the market compared with the number and wealth of their would-be possessors, and thirdly, except in the case of books of the greatest interest and rarity, by the condition of the copy offered in respect to completeness, size, freshness and absence of stains.
(A. W. Po.)
BOOK-KEEPING, a systematic record of business transactions, in a form conveniently available for reference, made by individuals or corporations engaged in commercial or financial operations with a view to enabling them with the minimum amount of trouble and of dislocation to the business itself to ascertain at any time (1) the detailed particulars of the transactions undertaken, and (2) the cumulative effect upon the business and its financial relations to others. Book-keeping, sometimes described as a science and sometimes as an art, partakes of the nature of both. It is not so much a discovery as a growth, the crude methods of former days having been gradually improved to meet the changing requirements of business, and this process of evolution is still going on. The ideal of any system of book-keeping is the maximum of record combined with the minimum of labour, but as dishonesty has to be guarded against, no system of book-keeping can be regarded as adequate which does not enable the record to be readily verified as a true and complete statement of the transactions involved. Such a verification is called an audit, and in the case of public and other large concerns is ordinarily undertaken by professional accountants (q.v.). Where the book-keeping staff is large it is usually organized so that its members, to some extent at least, check each other’s work, and to that extent an audit, known as a “staff audit” or “internal check,” is frequently performed by the book-keeping staff itself.