petty gambling in books printed at the Kelmscott and Doves’ presses, and in the fine paper copies of a certain Life of Queen Victoria, for which a premium of 250% was asked before publication, is another proof that until the manufacturing stage is over collecting cannot safely begin. But with this exception the field is open, and the 19th century offers as good a hunting ground as any of its predecessors.
While book-collecting may thus take an endless variety of forms the heads under which these may be grouped are few and fairly easily defined. They may be here briefly indicated together with some notes as to the literature which has grown up round them. The development Objects and methods.which bibliographical literature has taken is indeed very significant of the changed ideals of collectors. Brunet’s Manuel du libraire, first published in 1810, attained its fifth edition in 1860–1864, and has never since been re-edited (supplement, 1878–1880). The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature by W. T. Lowndes, first published in 1834, was revised by H. G. Bohn in 1857–1864, and of this also no further edition has been printed. These two works between them gave all the information the old-fashioned collectors required, the Trésor de livres rares et précieux by J. G. T. Graesse (Dresden, 1859–1867, supplementary volume in 1869) adding little to the information given by Brunet. The day of the omnivorous collector being past, the place of these general manuals has been taken by more detailed bibliographies and handbooks on special books, and though new editions of both Lowndes and Brunet would be useful to librarians and booksellers no publisher has had the courage to produce them.
To attract a collector a book must appeal to his eye, his mind or his imagination, and many famous books appeal to all three. A book may be beautiful by virtue of its binding, its illustrations or the simple perfection and harmony of its print and paper. The attraction of a fine binding has always been felt in France, the high prices quoted for Elzevirs and French first editions being often due much more to their 17th and 18th century jackets than to the books themselves. The appreciation of old bindings has greatly increased in England since the exhibition of them at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1891 (illustrated catalogue printed the same year), English blind stamped bindings, embroidered bindings, and bindings attributable to Samuel Mearne (temp. Charles II.) being much more sought after than formerly. (See Bookbinding.)
Illustrated books of certain periods are also much in request, and with the exception of a few which early celebrity has prevented becoming rare have increased inordinately in price. The primitive woodcuts in incunabula are now almost too highly appreciated, and while the Nuremburg Chronicle (1493) seldom fetches more than £30 or the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499) more than £120, rarer books are priced in hundreds. The best books on the subject are: for Italy, Lippmann’s Wood Engraving in Italy in the 15th Century (1888), Kristeller’s Early Florentine Woodcuts (1897), the duc de Rivoli’s (Prince d’Essling’s) Bibliographie des livres à figures vénitiens 1469–1525 (1892, new edition 1906); for Germany, Muther’s Die deutsche Bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance (1884); for Holland and Belgium, Sir W. M. Conway’s The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the 15th Century (1884); for France the material will all be found in Claudin’s Histoire de l’imprimerie en France (1900, &c.). Some information on the illustrated books of the early 16th century is given in Butsch’s Die Bücherornamentik der Renaissance (1878), but the pretty French books of the middle of the century and the later Dutch and English copper-engraved book illustrations (for the latter see Colvin’s Early Engraving and Engravers in England, 1905) have been imperfectly appreciated. This cannot be said of the French books of the 18th century chronicled by H. Cohen, Guide de l’amateur de livre à gravures du XVIII e siècle (5th ed., 1886), much of the same information, with a little more about English books, being given in Lewine’s Bibliography of Eighteenth Century Art and Illustrated Books (1898). English books with coloured illustrations, for which there has arisen a sudden fashion, are well described in Martin Hardie’s English Colour Books (1906). Bewick’s work has been described by Mr Austin Dobson.
Appreciation of finely printed books has seldom extended much beyond the 15th century. In addition to the works mentioned in the article on incunabula (q.v.), note may be made of Humphrey’s Masterpieces of the Early Printers and Engravers (1870), while Lippmann’s Druckschriften des XV bis XVIII Jahrhunderts (1884–1887) covers, though not very fully, the later period.
Among books which make an intellectual appeal to the collectors may be classed all works of historical value which have not been reprinted, or of which the original editions are more authentic, or convincing, than modern reprints. It is evident that these cover a vast field, and that the collector in taking possession of any corner of it is at once the servant and rival of historical students. Lord Crawford’s vast collections of English, Scottish and Irish proclamations and of papal bulls may be cited as capital instances of the work which a collector may do for the promotion of historical research, and the philological library brought together by Prince Lucien Bonaparte (An Attempt at a Catalogue by V. Collins, published 1894) and the Foxwell collection of early books on political economy (presented to the university of London by the Goldsmiths’ Company) are two other instances of recent date. Much collecting of this kind is now being carried on by the libraries of institutes and societies connected with special professions and studies, but there is ample room also for private collectors to work on these lines.
Of books which appeal to a collector’s imagination the most obvious examples are those which can be associated with some famous person or event. A book which has belonged to a king or queen (more especially one who, like Mary queen of Scots, has appealed to popular sympathies), or to a great statesman, soldier or poet, which bears any mark of having been valued by him, or of being connected with any striking incident in his life, has an interest which defies analysis. Collectors themselves have a natural tenderness for their predecessors, and a copy of a famous work is all the more regarded if its pedigree can be traced through a long series of book-loving owners. Hence the production of such works as Great Book-Collectors by Charles and Mary Elton (1893), English Book-Collectors by W. Y. Fletcher (1902) and Guigard’s Nouvel armorial du bibliophile (1890). Books condemned to be burnt, or which have caused the persecution of their authors, have an imaginative interest of another kind, though one which seems to have appealed more to writers of books than to collectors. As has already been noted, most of the books specially valued by collectors make a double or triple appeal to the collecting instinct, and the desire to possess first editions may be accounted for partly by their positive superiority over reprints for purposes of study, partly by the associations which they can be proved to possess or which imagination creates for them. The value set on them is at least to some extent fanciful. It would be difficult, for instance, to justify the high prices paid by collectors of the days of George III. for the first printed editions of the Greek and Latin classics. With few exceptions these are of no value as texts, and there are no possible associations by which they can be linked with the personality of their authors. It may be doubted whether any one now collects them save as specimens of printing, though no class of books which has once been prized ever sinks back into absolute obscurity. On the other hand the prestige of the first editions of English and French literary masterpieces has immensely increased. A first folio Shakespeare (1623) was in 1906 sold separately for £3000, and the MacGeorge copies of the first four folios (1623, 1632, 1663–1664 and 1685) fetched collectively the high price of £10,000. The quarto editions of Shakespeare plays have appreciated even more, several of these little books, once sold at 6d. apiece, having fetched over £1000, while the unknown and unique copy of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus, discovered in Sweden, speedily passed to an American collector for £2000. Information as to early editions of famous English books will be found in Lowndes’ Bibliographer’s Manual, in Hazlitt’s Handbook to the Popular Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain from the Invention of Printing to the Restoration
