On the other hand, a first edition of Friendship's Garland can be bought at Messrs. Dobell's for 10s. 6d., and a first edition of Buchanan's Book of Orm for half-a-crown.
People still seem prepared to pay high prices for odds and ends from the nineties. Mr. Hollings has a complete Savoy at £7 10s. and two first editions of Oscar Wilde at nearly four pounds apiece.
A first edition of Trilby (1895) can be purchased for 7s. 6d. at Messrs. Dobell's, and of Daniel Deronda (1876) at 18s. Evan Harrington, in the twelve original parts of Once a Week, is offered at 25s. at the Serendipity Shop.
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Mr. Everard Meynell has a curiosity of nineteenth-century literature for sale in the shape of Coventry Patmore's Odes, dated 1868, but never published, for the following reason: "Early in 1868 he had written nine odes, which in the April of that year he printed for private circulation. Afterwards, keenly mortified at the coldness of their reception by friends, he made a fire in the hall and cast on it (as he thought) all the copies remaining in his hand, while he calmly sat and watched them burn. A friend, who had heard of the intended bonfire, persuaded his daughter Emily to abstract a copy or two, and these, with the few which had been sent to friends, were all that remained of the edition." The price of this soul saved from the burning is £8 10s., and a first edition of The Unknown Eros (1878), with inscription from the author to Richard Garnett, is priced £2 10s.
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Having recently picked up cheap a third edition (1872) of FitzGerald's Omar Khayyám (Quaritch, 1872), we are interested to see that a copy of the fourth edition (1879) is for sale at three guineas. We suspect ourselves of having made a bargain, but are not yet quite sure.
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Messrs. Dobell have an interesting collection of first editions of works by Victor Hugo, most of them presentation copies, with Hugo's autograph inscription, to Mademoiselle Louise Jung.
A. L. H.