BOOK-AUCTIONS AND SALES.
I.
IT is perhaps to be regretted that the late Adam Smith did not make an inquiry into the subject of Books and their Prices. The result, if not as exhaustive as the 'Wealth of Nations,' would have been quite as important a contribution to the science of social economy. In a general way, books are subject, like other merchandise, to the laws of supply and demand. But, as with other luxuries, the demand fluctuates according to fashion rather than from any real, tangible want. The want, for example, of the edition of Chaucer printed by Caxton, or of the Boccaccio by Valdarfer, is an arbitrary rather than a literary one, for the text of neither is without faults, or at all definitive. To take quite another class of books as an illustration: the demand for first editions of Dickens, Thackeray, Ruskin, and others, is perhaps greater than the supply; but we do not read these first editions any more than the Caxton Chaucer or the Valdarfer Boccaccio; we can get all the good we want out of the fiftieth edition. We do not, however, feel called upon to anticipate the labours and inquiries of the future Adam Smith; it must suffice us to indicate some of the more interesting prices and fashions in book-fancies which have prevailed during the last two centuries or so in London.
The sale of books by auction dates, in this country at all events, from the year 1676, when William Cooper, a bookseller of considerable learning, who lived at the sign of the Pelican, in Little Britain, introduced a custom which had for many years been practised on the Continent. The full title of this interesting catalogue is in Latin—a language long employed by subsequent book-auctioneers—and runs as follows:
Catalogus | variorum et insignium | Librorum | instructissimæBibliotheca | clarissimi doctissimiq Viri—Lazari Seaman, S.T. D. | quorum Auctio habebitur Londini | in ædibus Defunctiin Area et Viculo | Warwicensi. Octobris ultimo | curaGulielmi Cooper Bibliopolæ | Londini. | ||||||||||||
| apud |
| Ed. Brewster & Guil. Cooper. |
| ad insigne |
| Gruis in Cæmetario Paulino Pelicani in vico vulgariter dicto Little Britain. |
| 1676. | ||||
As will be seen from the foregoing, Cooper had no regular auction-rooms, for in this instance Dr. Seaman's books were sold at his own house in Warwick Court. Mr. John Lawler, in Booklore, December, 1885, points out an error first made by Gough (in the Gentleman's Magazine, and extensively copied since), who states that the sale occurred at Cooper's house in Warwick Lane. In his preface 'To the Reader,' Cooper makes an interesting announcement, by way of apology. 'It hath not been,' he says, 'usual here in England to make sale of books by way of Auction, or who will give most for them; but it having been practised in other Countreys to the advantage of Buyers and Sellers, it was therefore conceived (for the encouragement of learning) to publish the sales of these books in this manner of way; and it is hoped that this will not be Unacceptable to Schollars; and therefore we thought it convenient to give an advertisement concerning the manner of Proceeding therein.' The second sale, comprising the library of Mr. Thomas Kidner, was held by Cooper three months after, i.e., February 6, 1676-77. On February 18, 1677-78, the third sale by auction was held, and this, as Mr. Lawler has pointed out, is the first 'hammer'[100:A] auction, and was held at a coffee-house—'in vico vulgo dicto, Bread St. in Ædibus Ferdinandi stable coffipolæ ad insigne capitis Turcæ,' the auctioneer in this case being Zacharius Bourne, whilst the library was that of the Rev. W. Greenhill, author of a 'Commentary on Ezekiel,' and Rector of Stepney, Middlesex. The fourth sale was that of Dr. Thomas Manton's library, in March, 1678. From 1676 to 1682, no less than thirty sales were held, and these included, in addition to the four already mentioned, the libraries of Brooke, Lord Warwick, Sir Kenelm Digby (see p. [120]), Dr. S. Charnock, Dr. Thomas Watson, John Dunton, the crack-brained bookseller, Dr. Castell, the author of the 'Heptaglotton,' Dr. Thomas Gataker, and others. The business of selling by auction was so successful that several other auctioneers adopted it, including such well-known booksellers as Richard Chiswell and Moses Pitt. At a very early period a suspicion got about that the books were 'run up' by those who had a special interest in them, and accordingly the vendors of Dr. Benjamin Worsley's sale, in May, 1678, emphatically denied this imputation, which they described as 'a groundless and malicious suggestion of some of our own trade envious of our undertaking.' In addition to this statement, they refused to accept any 'commissions' to buy at this sale.
