Between the more ambitious shop and the nondescript bookstall, there is a class or species of bookseller who deserves a niche in this place. We refer to men like Purcell, in Red Lion Passage, Red Lion Square, Holborn, who are almost as much printsellers as booksellers. They make one book by destroying many others. Grangerizing is the proper name of this practice; but as the Rev. Mr. Granger has been productive of more curses than a dozen John Bagfords—an evil genius of the same type—the process is now termed extra-illustrating. However much one may denounce the whole system, it is impossible, whatever a particular book-hunter's idiosyncrasy may be, not to feel interested in some of the collections which these enterprising and ruthless biblioclasts manage to get together. Mr. Purcell is an adept at this game, of which, doubtless, Mr. F. Harvey, of St. James's Street, is one of the most clever, as he is certainly the most eminent of professors. Mr. Purcell's collection of prints, engravings, press-cuttings, and so forth, cover an extraordinarily wide field. In fifty cases out of a hundred, booksellers who make grangerizing a speciality find it pays far better to break up an illustrated book than to sell it intact. When they purchase a book, it is obviously their own property, to preserve or destroy, as they find most agreeable. Personally, we regard the system as in many ways a pernicious one, but it is one upon which a vast amount of cant has been wasted.
But bookshops and stalls are obviously not the only places at which bargains in books are likely to be secured, as the following anecdote would seem to prove: 'A writer and reader well versed in the works of the minor English writers recently entered a newspaper-shop at the East End and purchased a pennyworth of snuff. When he got home he found that the titillating substance was wrapped in a leaf of Sir Thomas Elyot's black-letter book, "The Castell of Helth." The next day the purchaser went in hot haste to the shop and made a bid for the remainder of the volume. "You are too late, sir," spoke the shopkeeper. "After you had gone last night, a literairy gent as lives round the corner gave me two bob for the book. There was only one leaf torn out, which you got. The book was picked up at a stall for a penny by my son." The purchaser of the pennyworth at once produced the leaf, with instructions for it to be handed to his forestaller in the purchase of the volume, together with his name and address; and next day he received a courteous note of thanks from the "literairy gent" aforesaid.' Nothing is so uncertain as one's luck in book-hunting, but, without entirely discrediting the foregoing story, we can only say that it is an old friend with a new face. We have heard the same thing before. Not so very long ago, a certain bookseller thought he had at last got a prize; it was one of the rarest Shakespeare quartos, and worth close on £100. He had purchased it among a lot of other dirty pamphlets. He looked the matter up, and everything seemed to point to the fact that his copy was genuine in every respect—a most uncommon stroke of luck indeed. The precious quarto was in due course sent to Puttick's, and the modest reserve of £70 was placed upon it. The quarto was genuine in every respect, but it was a facsimile!
It may be taken for granted that genuine Shakespeare quartos do not occur on bookstalls, and even a rare Americana tract only occurs in the wildest dreams of the book-hunter. Nevertheless, 'finds' of more or less interest continue to be made by keen book-hunters. Dr. Garnett tells how a tradesman at Oswestry had in his possession books to which he attached no importance, but which, a lady informed him, must be very rare. They were submitted to the authorities of the British Museum, who gave a high price for them. One was Sir Anthony Sherley's 'Wits New Dyall,' published in 1604, of which only one other copy is known to be in existence. As a rule, offers of rare books come from booksellers, who do not always say how they become possessed of them. Among the private people who offer books to the Museum for sale are a large proportion who think that a book must necessarily be rare because it is a hundred years old or more. Before the great catalogue was made, finds were occasionally made in the Museum itself, and even now a volume will occasionally be found which has special interest and value on account of its binding. In other cases a book will be found to be in a binding made up of leaves of some rare work far more valuable than the book itself.
SOME BOOK-HUNTING LOCALITIES.
LITTLE BRITAIN AND MOORFIELDS.
THERE are few more attractive phases in the history of book-hunting in London than that of localities. Up to nearly the end of the last century, these localities were for the most part, and for close on 350 years, confined to within a narrow area. With the rapid expansion of London north, east, south, and west, the 'trade' has not only expanded, but its representatives have sprung up in every district, whilst many of the older ones have forsaken the limits of the City, and pitched their tents in Greater London. For centuries bookselling and publishing flourished side by side in St. Paul's Churchyard, Fleet Street, and their immediate neighbourhoods.