The Modern Side--Words of advice--The place and functions of Free
Libraries--Coleridge and Byron period--Unhealthy state of the
market--The Dickens and Thackeray movement--Fashions in books--A
valuable suggestion--Slight actual demand for costly modern
productions--Two often make a market--Effect of time in settling
value--Forecast of the durability of a few names--A large-paper
copy of Byron's poems, 1807--Cheap literature not a modern
invention--The published price noted on the face of early
volumes--An episode--Practical buyers not to be considered
collectors--The first edition considered from editorial and other
points of view.
IN the acquisition of modern books, far greater caution is requisite
than in that of the older literature, since the output is so enormous,
and the changes in taste and depreciation in value so rapid and so
capricious. The Free and other Circulating or Reference Libraries
throughout the country must prove of immense service in superseding
the necessity of purchasing volumes of temporary interest or of
expensive character; and the average collector will, and does, find
that a certain number of dictionaries of various kinds, and of works
which happen to be favourites, suffice to exhaust his space and
resources. The Free Library is an undoubted boon in two ways: in
enabling us to read or consult books which we do not care to buy; and
again, in affording us an opportunity at leisure of judging whether
such and such a volume merits more than a passing notice and perusal.
The sole method of arriving at this information is to take the
publication home. Even where shelf-room and funds are forthcoming,
there is slight danger of any large percentage of recent literature
being added to the stores of a judicious householder. To read, perhaps
only to skim, and return, will be the general rule.
It is inexpedient to lend oneself too exclusively to a period or a
school; for even where one has to study for a purpose a particular
class of authors, or a particular subject or group of subjects, the
local institution is at hand to help one; and the cheap reproductions
of the writings of the earlier centuries, erring, as they do, on the
side of indulgence, place it in the power of individuals of modest
means to have at their elbows a representative assemblage, not
necessarily a cumbrous one, of the literature from Chaucer to the
present day, so that they may form a comparative estimate of the
intellectual activity and wealth of successive ages, while, at the
same time, the Greek and Latin authors are procurable in a collective
shape, if they desire to compare notes and satisfy themselves on the
obligations of the moderns to the ancients.
It amounts to this, that the Free Library is an agency which should
save us to a very material extent from actually acquiring books which
are not worth holding; it is not only a medium for reference, but for
testing and winnowing. But for the select private bookcase it is not,
or ought not to be, a substitute.
The Free Library is in its infancy and on its trial. In course of time
the spread of education and the force of experience will confer on it
better governing bodies, and better governing bodies will guarantee
better curators. The actual generation of librarians, or so-called
librarians, is the product of inefficient committees of control and
selection; and the worst part is that some of these gentlemen receive
salaries which would almost enable their employers to secure the
services of qualified officers.
I am not personally of the opinion that those institutions are an
unmixed blessing. For already there was a marked tendency to a decline
in the taste for collecting among the middle classes in the United
Kingdom, available resources being devoted to other outlets more
generally acceptable to families; and the facilities afforded by the
Free Library virtually amount to each individual parishioner being
enabled, without appreciable cost, to possess books on a far larger
scale than if he had a collection actually his own. The unfavourable
operation of this state of affairs is twofold: it injures the literary
market, and it promotes superficiality of study in the case of books
which should be owned, not borrowed, to be thoroughly mastered and
understood.
The range of choice, which embraces the writers of the modern school
in prose and verse, is both wide and difficult. During many years past
the number of authors within these lines has been continually on the
increase, yet, while merit and value may be questions of opinion,
there can be no serious or legitimate doubt that the output of
literary work of high character is not greater than it was, if indeed
as great. In the course of a quarter of a century many popular names
have either fallen or faded out of remembrance, alike of authors who
belonged to antecedent generations, and of those who have enjoyed a
transient and artificial celebrity, and have come and gone, as it
were, under the eyes of their immediate contemporaries. With the
advantages offered by lending libraries, it appears to be imprudent on
the part of any one who cannot conveniently form an extensive
collection of modern books to buy on the recommendation of the press
or the trade new favourites; for literary acquisitions are
unfortunately apt to occupy space, and, save in very exceptional
cases, to deteriorate in value. Even the original editions of the
later works of Tennyson are not in great demand, and the high figures
realised by one or two of his early productions are explainable in the
same way as those given for Byrons and Shelleys.
The Modern Side of collecting is classifiable into numerous branches,
according to the point of departure, as some differ in their view of
what is modern from others. If we have to lay down a dividing line,
however, we should make it comprehend the last decade of the
eighteenth century, when many of the writers who were the
contemporaries of our immediate foregoers began their literary
careers.
Then, again, there are two branches of the later literature: the more
recent writers themselves, and the reproductions, as I have noted, of the
writers of former periods; and the extent to which the edited collections
have been carried places it within the power of many who so desire to
specialise on a certain line, and to deal representatively with the rest.
The specialist who proposes to himself as a field for his activity the
Coleridge and Byron period, or who, again, confines his efforts to the
writings of one or two of that set, has his work before him. Generally
speaking, the first editions, which are those usually desired, are not
uncommon; but there is almost always a _crux_, an _introuvable_, for
which the not altogether blameable dealer puts on the screw, and
charges more than for all the remaining items. Bohn's _Lowndes_ yields
a fair account of this family of literature; and Alexander Ireland,
Richard Herne Shepherd, and others have bestowed vast pains on drawing
up monographs on Coleridge, Hazlitt, Hunt, Shelley, Lamb, Keats,
Browning, Tennyson, and the rest. It is difficult to foresee what the
final upshot may be; probably, when fabulous prices have drawn forth
from their hiding-places additional copies of many of these latter-day
objects of keen pursuit, the market will fall and the craze will
subside. It is a purely artificial and spurious one.
A second group, to whose books a collector may reasonably and
conveniently confine his attention, consists of the poets and
prose-writers who are still, or who were till lately, among us; and a
fairly numerous body of matter falls within this class, as we may
judge from a glance at the names which present themselves in the
publishers' and booksellers' lists. In selecting the contemporary
school, there is the undoubted advantage that you can institute a
comparison between the book and its author, and that you may fall in
with him at dinner, in a drawing-room or in a shop, and congratulate
him or solicit an explanation of some fine but obscure passage; and
should you also be literary, he has the opportunity of exchanging
compliments with you. The old dead writers receive praise and offer no
equivalent.
During a series of years there was a notorious run, which, as usual,
became indiscriminate, on first editions of the writings of Dickens,
Thackeray, and other foremost men of the period, eclipsing, as it
seemed, even the demand for the earlier English classics, till the
auctioneers and booksellers in their catalogues underlined at a
venture every _editio princeps_, though it might be the last as well
as the first, and, whether or no, a book of no mark. But the
enthusiasm has at last contracted itself within narrower and more
intelligent limits, and is restricted to productions which rank as
masterpieces or are special favourites, and then all postulates have
to be satisfied, all bibliographical minutiae have to be studied. It
is impossible to foresee how far this latest compromise may last; but
whatever it is, there must always be some novelty to keep the market
going, and bring grist to the mill. The world of fashion comprehends
books as well as bonnets and dresses; but the literary section is a
humble one by comparison, and is in few hands. Every fresh _mode_ has
somewhere its starter, and it usually prevails long enough to suit the
purposes of the trade, when it makes way for its successor.
If one had the ordering of these strategical devices, one would
imagine that the true policy was to buy up a given class of books,
procure the insertion of a clever article or two in the press,
extolling their merits and lamenting the public ignorance and neglect,
and then launch a Jesuitically constructed catalogue devoted to such
undeservedly disregarded treasures. But we may have been forestalled.
Who knows?
The less current and every-day literary ware appeals to a more or less
narrow constituency. There is a proverb, "The wool-seller knows the
wool-buyer;" and it has to be so in books. There are volumes which, if
they do not from their character or price suit one of a circle of
half-a-dozen collectors, with whose means and wants the whole trade is
generally familiar, are exceedingly likely to suit nobody outside the
public libraries at public library prices. So much is this the case,
that many booksellers do not think it worth their while to publish
catalogues, and content themselves with reporting to the most probable
purchaser fresh acquisitions. With certain very special and costly
rarities _two_ often make a market.
Time will perform its habitual office or function for us and our
successors of separating from the multitudinous accumulation of modern
published or printed matter such portion as, on deliberate inquiry and
scrutiny, appears to be of permanent value. There is no doubt that
much will be thrown aside; but the _residuum_ which will bear the test
of dispassionate judgment must prove considerable in itself, and also
when taken into account as an appendix to the record left by preceding
generations of writers. There may be certain authors and authoresses
whom our descendants will like to have by them, even though they may
no longer exert a sensible influence on literature and thought, just
as we prize many of the older schools and types for characteristics
and allusions which strike us as curious or entertaining; and soon, as
decade follows decade, and the twentieth century has well opened, men
and women, who were our grandsires' contemporaries, will seem through
the lengthening vista almost as remote as they were from the Stuart
epoch with its Elizabethan and Shakespearian traditions.
It is useless and invidious to particularise, and, besides, when one
has drawn up a list of names, which are more or less obviously
ephemeral, one cannot be certain as to the rest. Some must live; some
may.
The astonishing demand for the first editions of our modern poets and
novelists has, as was generally anticipated, subsided, and in some
cases almost ceased; and it is extremely doubtful whether the taste
will ever assume again the same unhealthy proportions. For one result
of the matter has been to make it perfectly clear that copies of
Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson,
and so forth, exist in much greater plenty than was at first supposed,
though very little reflection should have sufficed to establish the
fact as an eminent probability; and all that was needed to draw them
from their resting-places was the series of paragraphs in the press
conveying to holders how valuable their property had unexpectedly
become. Shall we not have more copies of Shelley's poor little
brochure of 1810 offered for sale ere long, as well as of Thackeray's
_Exquisites_ and _King Glumpus_?
At the same time, while we insist that the survival of means of supply
is too large, and the market too limited, to sustain the extravagant
quotations of recent years, there will ever remain persons prepared to
give generous prices for absolutely first-class examples of the best
modern authors. There must be no qualification, nothing secondary,
nothing dubious; and with these provisos, we do not venture to predict
that the competition might not become keener than ever. The same
experience will result here and there, whenever a book forming a
desideratum in more than one cabinet occurs for sale, and is perhaps
the first copy which has been offered. At Sotheby's in June 1896,
Shelley's _Oedipus Tyrannus_, 1820, it is said, was carried under
these circumstances to L130. It was, we believe, one of two copies,
picked up by a well-known amateur for fourpence each. On another
account--its perfectly immaculate state in boards--a large-paper copy
of Byron's poems, 1807, was thought by Mr. Edward Huth not too dear at
L105. It had been acquired by a London bookseller in exchange for one
in morocco from a correspondent in Yorkshire, the latter receiving the
bound book (which cost the vendor L27) and L18 difference, so that
there was a profit on the transaction of L60. Seriously speaking, the
purchase was extravagantly dear, for the book on large paper is at all
events not scarcer than on small. One of the most signal incidents,
however, in modern auctioneering annals was the sale of MSS. copies of
the _Endymion_ and _Lamia_ of Keats in the poet's handwriting for
L1000, and the subsequent offer to the purchasers at that figure of a
large advance for their bargain. These two items are printed, and the
written copies were those employed by the printer, as upon the first
leaf of each MS. were the directions as to size. They were in the
familiar round schoolboy hand, and presented occasional corrections.
We heard a suggestion that there might have once, at all events, been
a duplicate copy in existence. If the lots were worth the money, what
would the manuscript of _Venus and Adonis_ or _Hamlet_ fetch?
The mischief which proceeds from the advertisements through the press
of sensational sale prices is not one for which either the buyers or
the sellers are responsible. It is due to the notorious circumstance
that very few persons are able to discriminate accurately between an
important item in an auction or elsewhere, and another submitted to
their approval, ostensibly and professedly identical, but actually
very different. A certain familiar type of bookseller will tell you
that a copy of such or such a work fetched L50 under the hammer last
week, but that he can let you have his--same edition, same date, same
nearly everything--for fifty shillings. Of course it is no such
matter; yet the bait is often swallowed, and the poor (or possibly
rich) fish caught.
The relatively cheap literature of the present day has been thought to
be a revival rather than an invention. We meet with tracts published
in the reign of Elizabeth with the express notation of the price of
issue, namely, one penny. The _Book of Common Prayer_, 1549, was to be
sold at 2s. 2d. unbound, and 4s. in paste or boards. The ordinary
amount charged for a tract extending to thirty or forty pages, and for
a quarto play, was 4d. or a groat. The first folio Shakespeare, 1623,
cost the original purchaser 20s.; Percival's _Spanish Dictionary_,
1599, appears to have come out at 12s. There are lists of
advertisements attached to publications of the later Stuart era
showing that a large variety of popular productions brought the
printer or stationer twopence or a penny. A curious little edition of
_Coffee-House Jests_, 1760, bears the imprint:--
"Drogheda. Printed for the sake of a Penny:
Sold in Waterford, Cork, and Kilkenny."
But throughout these statistics, which are capable, of course, of
infinite augmentation, we have to keep before us the difference in the
value of money, and the purchasing power of the same amount in other
and more practical directions; and it follows that the printed matter
offered to-day for threepence or sixpence had no real parallel in
former times, and that the absolutely cheap book is a product of
modern facilities for manufacture.
The published price not unfrequently presents itself at the foot of
the title on books of the late seventeenth and earlier eighteenth
centuries. The simplicity of some individuals who are ranked among
occasional or casual buyers was illustrated many years since by a man
going into a shop in Fleet Street and putting down eighteenpence in
payment of Hubert's _Edward II._, 1721, in the window. The bookseller
explained to him that his price was 5s. "But," insisted the customer,
"look at the title-page; it was published at 1s. 6d." "Then you had
better go to the publisher," observed the other, replacing the volume.
Book-collecting seems scarcely to concern very closely those who
regard the pursuit from a severely practical point of view, or in the
aspect of absolute intrinsic importance. It is true enough that one
may form, not only a library, but a remarkably extensive one, of
books of reference and study; but this does not quite answer to the
idea of a bibliophile--in fact, it is little more than the digestion
into book-form of a mass of learning and useful information. Again,
if, without embracing such classes of volumes, we limit ourselves to
those which, as we express the matter above, are positively important,
we of course find on our shelves all the capital authors, ancient and
modern; yet how many we should have to reject which are accounted
indispensable to a choice cabinet! And such is apt to be more
peculiarly the case in a selection formed on Anglo-French lines, as
anybody may readily judge by examining a catalogue of this kind, where
pages and pages are occupied by irritating trifles of no solid
pretensions whatever, not even those evident in personal or heraldic
accessories.
The general rule may be applied to our modern books, that, whatever
they may be for purposes of instruction or entertainment, they seldom
represent the outlay, and still more rarely a profit upon it when the
day arrives for realising. During some time past we have witnessed the
rise and fall, or at least disappearance from the front rank, of
individuals and schools of individuals whose writings no amount of
friendly support in the press was capable of propping up beyond three
or four seasons. It is not that some of them may not hereafter, like
our older authors, return to notice and currency; but they will suffer
that intermediate period of neglect which has been experienced by
well-nigh all our greatest names in letters. There is for literature,
in common with its buyers, an earth, a purgatory, and a heaven--or
something else. The public cannot keep pace with the vast and unbroken
succession of literary produce, and the favourites of the day pass
over to neutral ground, with very few exceptions, when their honeymoon
has expired, to await the deliberate verdict of posterity on their
merit and their station. To the investor for a more or less immediate
return, however, they are precarious possessions, unless the market be
carefully watched. The wealthy and absolutely uncommercial amateur
disregards these risks and these counsels; and he is in a sense to be
envied.
The question of the First Edition is not limited to any era of
literary history and production, and the call for this class of book,
at first (as usual) rather unreasoning, begins to be more critical and
narrow. The author to be thus honoured by his posterity must have a
certain bouquet and vogue. He must be a Shakespeare, a Jonson, a
Herrick, a Burton, a Defoe, a Bunyan, a Burns, or (if we cross the
sea) a Moliere, a Montaigne, or a Cervantes.
With the first edition in some bibliographical schemes is associated
the Best One. The possessor of both may pride himself on being able to
show the earliest and latest state of the writer's mind, what he
originally conceived, and what he decided to leave behind him as his
_ultimum vale_. For the most part, however, first thoughts are treated
as better than second, and it may actually be the case that, alike in
ancient and modern books, the too fastidious and wavering ancient
poet, or playwright, or essayist has done himself in maturer years an
injustice by blotting the fresh impulses of his noviciate. It is a
case, perhaps, where the public is entitled to intervene, and taking
the two readings, deliver its award--always supposing that the text is
that of a man worth the pains, and, again, that both versions are the
language of the author, not that of the editor. It is obvious that, as
a matter of literary and scientific or technical completeness, the
last edition of a work is the most desirable; but it is particularly
the case with volumes endeared by personal associations, such as
Gilbert White's _Selborne_, that one prefers the text as the author
left it, even if one has to be at the pains to consult a second
publication for up-to-date knowledge. The present point is one to
which I have adverted in an earlier place.
Apart from the collector, the first and the best impressions of
writers of importance, whose texts underwent at their own hands more
or less material changes, are necessarily an object of research to the
editor or specialist who has dedicated his attention to such or such a
study; and he is apt to pursue the matter still further than the
amateur, who does not, as a rule, esteem the intermediate issues. It
is this feeling and need which have led, since critical and
comparative editions came into fashion, to the accumulation by their
superintendents of an exhaustive array of titles and dates, with hints
of the most remarkable various readings; and the cause of
bibliography has gained, whether, in drawing together the series, the
book-hunter or the literary worker be the pioneer. From the editorial
and bibliographical points of view a complete sequence of the writings
of our more distinguished and durable authors is generally
practicable; but of excessively popular or favourite books, even of
the Elizabethan era, it is imperfect. We refer to such cases as the so
far unseen second impression of Shakespeare's _Passionate Pilgrim_ and
the ostensible disappearance of the original quarto of _Love's Labor's
Lost_.
Two questions connected with the present part of the subject before
us, now better understood and managed, were under the old system, so
far as we can ascertain or judge, permitted to remain in a very loose
and vague state. We allude to the law of copyright and the revision
for the press. Prior to the institution of the Stationers' Company and
the existence of a Register, the sole protection for authors and
publishers was by the grant of a privilege or a monopoly for a term of
years; yet even when registration had become compulsory, and was
supposed to be effectual, spurious editions constantly found their way
into the market, while books of which the writers might desire, on
various grounds, to keep the MSS. in their own hands, found their way
into print through some irregular channel. Such was the case with
Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, 1603, and (in a somewhat different way) with
the third edition of his _Passionate Pilgrim_, 1612; and we perceive
that of Bacon's _Essays_ during some years two parallel impressions
were current without ostensible interference or warrant. There are
frequent instances in which authors state that their motive in
hastening into type was the rumour that a surreptitious and inaccurate
text was threatened, as if there was no legal power to prevent such a
class of piracy.
The correction of proofs by early writers, if we except books of
reference, and those not without qualification, was evidently very lax
and precarious. The entire body of popular literature, the drama
included, offers the appearance, when we investigate examples, of
having been left to the mercy of the typographers, and the faulty
readings of old plays are more readily susceptible of explanation from
the fact that we owe their survival in a printed form as often as not
to the clandestine sale of the prompters' copies to the stationer. The
editors of our dramatists have consequently found it an extremely
laborious task to restore the sense of corrupt passages, and have
sometimes abandoned the attempt in despair. Not a few of the pieces in
the last edition of Dodsley come within this category; and we may
signalise the unique tragedy of _Appius and Virginia_, 1575, as a
prodigy of negligent and ignorant execution on the part of the
original compositor. But to the same cause is due our still remaining
uncertainty as to the true reading of numerous places in Shakespeare
himself.
Our collectors, however, are not particularly solicitous to study the
present aspect of the matter, and the hunter for First Editions is by
no means likely to care an iota about the purity of the text, but may
be more apt to congratulate himself on the ownership of the genuine
old copy with all the errors of the press as vouchers for its
character. Who would exchange a second _Hamlet_ of 1604 for a first
one of 1603, simply because the former happens to contain as much
more, and the latter is little better than a _torso_?
The long uncertainty and insecurity of authors' rights, whatever may
be thought of the present position of the matter, led at a very early
date to the adoption of such safeguards against plagiarism as it was
in the power of specialists, at all events, to impose. Some time after
its original publication in 1530, we find John Palsgrave, compiler of
the _Eclaircissement de la Langue Francoise_, prohibiting the printer
from giving or selling copies to any one without his leave, lest his
profits as a teacher of the language should be prejudicially affected;
and so it was that preceptors often reserved the right of sale, and
dealt direct with buyers, and in one case (only a sample) a treatise
on Shorthand by Richard Weston (1770) is delivered to purchasers at
eighteenpence on the express condition that they shall not allow the
book to leave their own hands or premises.