Even an approximately accurate appreciation in a commercial sense of books of various classes can only be reached by one who is behind the scenes, who can feel the pulse of the market, and who follows the incessant changes in its temperature and feeling. It is absurd for a simple amateur, who passes his time in a study or an office, to attempt or presume to instruct us on this subject. He knows what he has given for his own library, and what some of his friends have given for theirs, and he reads the accounts in the papers of periodical sales. But it is a widely different affair, when one sets about the task, intrusted to this or that individual by a friendly publisher or editor-general, in a scientific manner; and it is only under such circumstances that one realises, or can render intelligible to others, what prices actually mean and are, how much they depend on perpetually modifying and varying influences, and how little the quotations found in works of reference are to be trusted. The turns of the book-market are as sudden and strange, as delicate and mysterious, as those of a Bourse; and the steadfast and keen onlooker alone can keep pace with them—not he always; the wire-pullers are so many.
How, then, shall collectors of books, for example, protect themselves? They cannot. It is their diversion, their by-play; their time and thought are engaged elsewhere in business, where it is their turn to reap the fruit of special study and experience, and they hand over a percentage of this to the caterer for their pleasure. The whole world is, in other words, perpetually intent on gathering and distributing; we are, every one of us, buyers and sellers, not of necessaries only, but of luxuries and amusements.
Coming to the more immediate point, men nowadays, in the presence of a severe and almost homicidal competition for subsistence, have to devote their whole attention to their chosen employment, and have the most limited opportunities of ascertaining or verifying values as submitted to them by experts in the book-market; they have Lowndes, which is almost worthless, and Book Prices Current, which is, of course, more contemporary, but must be read between the lines; and the extreme difficulty of judging what is worth having, and how much should be given for it, has led to that frequent habit of collectors favouring a particular dealer, or, as an alternative, pursuing a policy highly unpleasant to dealers by acquiring direct from the salerooms. Fortunately for booksellers the latter plan does not suit busy men, and it is just that class, especially the merchant and the stockbroker, the solicitor and accountant, who are their best clients.
The trade has its sorrows and trials; but it cannot be a very bad one when we see how many live out of it, if they do not often make fortunes. The fact is, that the motives for buying books are almost as infinitely multifarious as the books themselves, and there exists not the volume for which the customer will not arise, if the holder can wait; and this customary incidence accounts for the familiar aphorism that booksellers accumulate stock, not money—an aphorism to which the exceedingly rare exceptions prove the rule.
Putting it differently, bookselling outside the current literature is a form of speculation which varies according to the class of investment which the stockholder selects; and it is quite necessary to bear in mind the nature and tendency of the business in order to more clearly appreciate the uncertainty of prices, and how utterly impossible it must ever be for any ordinary book-buyer to rely on his purchases as a representation of value. If he does not view the matter in that light, or chooses to let the instruction or pleasure derived from his acquisitions become a set-off against the outlay, it is very well; what he or his heirs get for the property is in that case all profit.
We dwell a little on this aspect of the matter, because we are quite aware that in purchasing books many persons look at the ulterior question, and even demand of the vendor how much the article is likely to bring when or if re-sold. Such a contingency usually limits itself to cases where a volume is secured for a special and temporary object, or where funds are restricted and the fancy is purely personal.
Apart from these considerations, there are other influences always at work to render the book-market uncertain and insecure. Collectors who have no fixed plan or aim are apt to follow the precedent set by such as have, or are supposed to have, one, and this obviously tends to create a run on particular subjects or authors, till the call is satisfied, or the coterie grows sensible of the inexpediency of proceeding any further. A revolt from a fad naturally gluts the market with the discarded copies, and the latest vendors have to bear the brunt. Such is not an occasional incidence, but one continually in progress among a certain quota, and a large quota, too, of the book-buying public, who let others judge for them, instead of judging for themselves.
It cannot be treated as otherwise than an ordinary and reasonable sequitur that prices which are purely artificial are also arbitrary and precarious. The quotations which are to be found in such a publication as Book Prices Current are at best a bare record of facts; but with such a record at his elbow no man who does not possess a fair amount of knowledge and judgment would be safe in his figures. It would be little better than plunging. Still less is it of any use to rely on the reports in the press, which are frequently inaccurate, and in nine cases out of ten are the work of inexperienced persons.
The careful and discerning observer of these problems (for such they indeed are) discovers that the high prices for books, which the trade is never tired of citing as an encouragement to its connections, are almost invariably associated with conditions which are adventitious or accidental, and which scarcely ever comprise benefit to a living individual. A man must be truly exceptional, phenomenally above suspicion, bedridden with an incurable complaint, to disarm the scepticism of the wary buyer under the hammer; it is the property of the departed which is preferred; for the result cannot help him, and he is not at hand to reserve lots. So recently as 1896, there was an exception to the prevailing rule; but it was one rather in appearance than in reality. We allude to the Frere sale at Sotheby's. Now, we repeat that this was merely an ostensible departure from ordinary experience; and what we mean is that the most valuable portion of the library was that which once belonged to another and antecedent person, Sir John Fenn, and that these items had been long known to exist, and were desiderata for which public and private collections had hitherto thirsted in vain. No wonder, then, that there was a dead set at them, the living owner maulgre.
The booksellers are apt to complain nowadays of their inability to move or place items with which they cannot give a certificate of character. It will not always suffice to allege that they have realised a great deal of money heretofore, as vouched by Lowndes; they must carry with them some definite recommendation; they must exhibit remarkable allusions; they may be written by an ancestor or namesake of the buyer in view; at all events, if they are not by a good author, they must be on a good subject. Their interest must be (1) personal; (2) local; or (3) topical. There is a drift on the part of collectors of the purer type toward accredited and certified securities—toward recognised writers. Established character goes for more than mere rarity. The trade can always place fine copies of authors who have made their personality standard: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Sydney, Jonson, Milton, Butler, Swift, Thomson, Goldsmith, Miss Burney, Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Thackeray, George Eliot. If to the more fastidious or self-diffident amateur an excessively rare item is introduced without credentials, it is in danger of being rejected; the same principle applies to certain foreign writers, such as Cervantes, Montaigne, Molière, Corneille, La Fontaine. But in almost all these cases the demand is not for collected or library editions, or even for first copies of everything coming from the pens of those writers. Chaucer has to be served up in the types of Caxton or De Worde or Pynson; Spenser is only sought in quarto and octavo; Shakespeare means the four folios and certain quartos, and the Poems in octavo; the leading aim in Sydney is the Arcadia of 1590; Jonson is just admissible in folio (the right one), but is preferred in quarto; by Milton we mean the Comus, Lycidas, Poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained in the original issues. Butler is only represented by his Hudibras; Swift by his Gulliver; Defoe by his Crusoe (some must have all three volumes, although the first is worth nearly all the money); Thomson by the Seasons; Goldsmith by the Vicar of Wakefield; Miss Burney by one or two of her Novels in boards; Dr. Johnson by his Rasselas; Scott by the Waverley series with uncut edges, and so forth.
