October 31st saw the publication of the first number of the Bookman's Journal and Print Collector, qualified in a sub-title as The Journal for the Trade, for Collectors, and for Libraries. "Our aim," we read in the editorial, "is to be useful, not ornamental. Booksellers, publishers, librarians, and collectors alike from all parts of the country have agreed with the need for such a journal as this, and have given us generous support." The magazine contains reviews, a library supplement of "New Publications and Reprints of the Week," miscellaneous articles and notes on books and booksellers, prints and engravings. A useful feature of the journal will be the series of complete bibliographies of modern authors which it is proposed to publish. The first is devoted to the works of Hubert Crackanthorpe, who died in 1896, aged only twenty-six. Similar bibliographies of Masefield, Galsworthy, Conrad, Gissing, George Moore, and Merrick are in preparation. Those who wish to buy or sell books will be interested in the "Books Wanted" and "Books for Sale" columns of advertisements. Altogether, we think that this little paper will have no difficulty in substantiating its claims and will prove very valuable to all book-lovers.
Another interesting event in the world of books is the opening of the Chelsea Book Club at 65 Cheyne Walk. "It is being founded," we are told, "in the belief that in bookselling selection and specialisation are essential. It will aim, therefore, at having a stock of those books, new and second-hand, English and foreign, dealing with Belles Lettres and Art which appear to be most worthy of study and appreciation." A reading-room for the use of members will be attached to the club, in which lectures and exhibitions of works of art will be held from time to time. Those who wish to have further particulars as to membership, country book-service, lectures and exhibitions are asked to apply to the Secretary, 65 Cheyne Walk, London, S.W.3.
*****
At the sale, by Messrs. Sotheby, of the late Mr. W. J. Leighton's stock, to which we referred last month, a copy of Walton's Compleat Angler (1655) fetched £21 10s.; The Pricke of Conscience, fifteenth century M.S., £50; Myrrour and Description of the Worlde, printed by Laurence Andrews, circa 1530, £72. Important auction sales in the month of November were Messrs. Sotheby's sale of the late Sir Frank Crisp's library and the sale of Mr. Christie Miller's library on the 28th of the month. We shall have gone to press before the results of the sale are known. What will be paid for Lot 81, we wonder?—Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, the first edition, folio, 1623.
The Christie-Miller library contains many other books of extraordinary interest, among them three unique copies of works by Nicholas Breton: A Smale Handfull of Fragrant Flowers, Selected and Gathered out of the Lovely Garden of Sacred Scripture; A Floorish upon Fancie, As Gallant a Glose upon so Triflinge a Text as ever was Written; and The Workes of a Young Wit Trust up with a Fardell of Prettie Fancies. Robert Greene is represented by three unique copies, one of Gwydonius, and another of Arbasto, The Anatomie of Fortune; and the third of the earliest edition of A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, containing the passage, suppressed in all the later editions, in abuse of Gabriel Harvey and his brothers, which started the literary war between Greene and the pedant of Cambridge.
*****
ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES
It is possible, with a bundle of booksellers' catalogues, to waste more time more pleasantly than in any other way. As one idly turns the pages, catching sight here and there of a strange title or a book on some impossibly queer subject, one realises, more fully than one could do in years of social intercourse with one's fellow-men, how fantastic a thing is the human mind—a stable full of prancing hobby-horses for crochety horsemen to ride about the world. We can speculate pleasantly on the character of the practical parson who wrote the Clergyman's Intelligencer; or, a Compleat Alphabetical List of all the Patrons in England and Wales, with the ... Benefices in their Gift and their Valuation Annexed (1745), for which Mr. Mayhew asks 5s. In the same catalogue is offered that curiosity in the history of science, P. H. Gosse's Creation (Omphalus); an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot, published in 1857, two years before the Origin of Species. The title, Ode to the Duke of Wellington and Other Poems, Written Between the Ages of Eleven and Thirteen Years, by Robert Charles Dallas (1819), calls up visions of some tight-trousered infant prodigy; and we wish that the book were not an example of fine binding, and that Mr. Chaundy could part with it for less than 30s. Just above the infant, alphabetically and perhaps also in order of merit, we find the name of D'Adelsward, the author of a volume of poems (of which, in our ignorance, we had never heard) entitled Les Cortèges Qui Sont Passés. The volume, which was published in 1903, is bound in pink watered silk, and costs four guineas. We have a vision of something even more prodigious than the infant of 1819.
*****
Mr. Chaundy has a number of first editions of Disraeli's novels for sale. The very scarce Contarini Fleming (1832) is priced at £6; The Voyage of Captain Popanilla (1828) at 35s.; Vivian Grey (1826) at 21s.; Venetia (1837) at 20s. A first edition of Borrow's Wild Wales, in three volumes (1862), is offered by Messrs. Heffer, of Cambridge, for £9 9s. It is almost worth paying that for the sake of the description, at the beginning of the book, of the negro who sat on the walls of Chester, spitting into the void. You can have George Eliot for a good deal less. Mr. James Miles, of Leeds, has a Silas Marner (first edition, 1861) for 25s. First editions of Robert Bridges are, we notice, priced a good deal higher than the later firsts of Robert Browning. Eros and Psyche costs 15s. at Messrs. Heffer's, and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangan only 5s. The four volumes of the first edition of The Ring and the Book (1868) cost one 32s. at the same bookseller's.