BOOK-PRICES CURRENT, VOLUMES I. TO XVII. Being a Record of the Prices at which Books have been sold at Auction during the years 1887 to 1903, with the Titles and Descriptions of the Books in full, the Catalogue Numbers, and the Names of the Purchasers. Some of the earlier volumes are out of print and others are at a premium. Reports will be made in answer to queries by the publisher. Opinions of the Press. "We acknowledge, with much pleasure, that 'Book-Prices Current' is now the most carefully edited work of its kind published in this or any other country."-Athenæum. "Book-Prices Current-the Whitaker's Almanack of book-buyers and booksellers."-Illustrated London News. "A very useful and admirably edited and printed publication."—Morning Post. "To praise Book-Prices Current' is unnecessary; it has become indispensable to book collectors, and of vital interest to all who care for literature."-Globe. "Brunet, indeed, so long the book-buyer's chief delight, must yield to 'Book-Prices Current.'"-Notes and Queries. "It is beyond comparison the book-collector's cyclopædia. Its own earlier volumes, curiously enough, command very high prices.”—Daily Chronicle. "The practical utility to buyers and sellers of an authoritative annual work of reference like this requires no demonstration. The knowledge and skill displayed in this compilation merit cordial recognition." Standard. "To all classes of bookmen, the issues of Book-Prices Current' may be fairly pronounced indispensable."-Literary World. "It may be said without exaggeration that the annual volumes of Mr. Slater's admirable compilation are indispensable to such as desire to follow with any closeness the record of sales and the movements of the secondhand book market."-Times. "The work supplies a finely printed record which will be valued, not by the bookseller merely, but by the collector and librarian."-Daily Telegraph. "The book collector's Bible."-Pall Mall Gazette. "The record is extremely useful for buyers and collectors of books, and is a valuable index to current phases of book-collecting, and to fluctuations in the market."-Saturday Review. A RECORD OF THE PRICES AT WHICH BOOKS HAVE BEEN SOLD AT AUCTION, FROM OCTOBER, 1903, TO JULY, 1904, NOW READY. In demy 8vo., bound in buckram, uniform with BookPRICES CURRENT. Price One Guinea net. THE INDEX TO THE FIRST TEN VOLUMES OF BOOK-PRICES CURRENT (1887 to 1896): Constituting a Reference List of Subjects and, incidentally, a Key to Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature. "If money, as Anthony Trollope neatly put it, be the reward of labour, too much is certainly not asked for the labour which has marshalled into order a manuscript involving 33,000 distinct titles and considerably over 500,000 numerals. The typographical arrangement of the volume will receive praise from those who can understand the difficulties of the printers' task."The Guardian. "The Index' will be of great value to all who possess or have access to the annual volumes, and it is issued uniform with them."-The Westminster Gazette. "No well-conducted library should be without this useful and praiseworthy adminicle of order."- The Scotsman. "Supplies to a considerable extent the vacuum caused by the want of an up-to-date Lowndes.""-The Bookseller. "A work of independent and undoubted value, and should be in the hands of every bibliographer."-The Clique. "We cordially recognise the value of Mr. Jaggard's compilation, which is much more than a mere mechanical amalgamation of the ten annual indexes." -The Athenæum. LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. INTRODUCTION. THE auction season 1903-1904, the detailed results of which are reported in this volume of BOOK-PRICES CURRENT, cannot be considered entirely satisfactory, except from a purchaser's point of view. For some reason, books of an ordinary character, and these are always in a large majority, have failed to maintain the position in the market they aspired to during the last three or four years, and a very great depreciation in their current values is noticeable. This is, of course, to the advantage of those who have bought them, unless indeed the next season should witness a still further depreciation-an event that is not at all impossible. For the present, however, it may be said with every confidence that many of the works that appear in the auction rooms repeatedly year after year, and are regarded at all times as valuable contributions to the subjects to which they relate, show a falling off of from 30 to 40 per cent. compared with the amounts they used to bring in days when commercial and other surroundings were less unsettled. It may also be said with equal confidence that inferior books, which must at all times constitute the great mass of those which come to the hammer - inferior by reason of their unimportance per se, or because they belong to editions of little repute, or are in bad condition-have fallen away to such an extent that comparisons are almost out of the question. On the other hand, what may be styled the Aristocracy of the book-shelf, those really valuable books which have been sought after with increasing energy as they became scarcer and more difficult to acquire, has, if anything, become more aristocratic still. The market value of these is distinctly increasing, and bids fair to reach a point that will be regarded as prohibitive by all except the very few to whom a matter of money is of no importance. 131834 |