In strong Buckram, price £1 7s. 6d. each, nett. BOOK-PRICES CURRENT, VOLUMES IV., V. AND VI. Being a Record of the Prices at which Books have been sold at Auction during 1890, 1891, and 1892, with the Titles and Descriptions of the Books in full, the Catalogue Numbers, and the Names of the Purchasers. Volume I. is out of print, and is fetching from £5 to £6 a copy. Of Volumes II. and III. only a few copies are on sale, price £3 35. each, nett. Opinions of the Press. "It will furnish a record of great use and interest to the bibliophile."Notes and Queries. "The practical utility of such a record will be best appreciated by those who have been accustomed to consult such guides as Lowndes and Brunet with a feeling that their information, though in a great part obsolete, is at least much better than no information at all."-Daily News. "It will be serviceable to those who buy and to those who sell books; especially, we should imagine, to the latter. . . . Also it will enable owners to know the market value of their possessions, which is often, in these days of the first-edition craze, a great deal higher than the uninitiated would imagine."-Pall Mall Gazette. "Like other of Mr. Stock's publications, it is beautifully printed."— Printer and Stationer. "Such a publication has long been a desideratum needed by booksellers, librarians and bibliophiles."-Trübner's Literary Record. Book-Prices Current: 45-5-33 A RECORD OF THE PRICES AT WHICH BOOKS HAVE BEEN SOLD AT AUCTION, FROM DECEMBER, 1892, TO NOVEMBER, 1893. PREFACE. THE sales by auction reported in this volume represent nearly 50,000 lots of property and probably double that number of books. The total amount realized was £66,470 15s. 6d., a good but not unusual average. No really first-class library has been dispersed during the current year, but one reported on p. 23, under the title of "a portion of the Library of a Gentleman, deceased," would undoubtedly have merited that position had it been larger. Although there were only 418 lots in the catalogue the amount realized was rather more than £2,400, an average that has only been exceeded a few times during the last three or four years. A general survey of the position shows but little change in the value of most classes of books. Original editions of Sir Walter Scott's works, if in the original boards, but not otherwise, are rising rapidly in the market; Dickens and Thackeray, and all books illustrated by such well-known artists as Rowlandson, Alken, Hablot Browne and Leech, stand firm, or indeed may be said to be getting more expensive, if only they come up in point of quality and condition to the rather exacting requirements of the collector of such books. Inferior copies are common enough and excite comparatively little interest. At one time it seemed likely that a class of books that has only come into prominence during the past twelve months, consisting of strictly limited editions of the works of modern poets and essayists, might be able to compete to some extent with the older collectors' works, now practically unprocurable except at great expense, but this has proved not to be the case. However well these books may have sold when first published, they have made very little |