Recently published in strong Buckram, price £1 75. 6d. BOOK PRICES CURRENT, VOLUME IV. Being a Record of the Prices at which Books have been sold at Auction during 1888, with the Titles and Descriptions of the Books in full, the Catalogue Numbers, and the Names of the Purchasers. This volume has been very gladly welcomed by collectors, booksellers and book buyers, as being a most useful record of prices, and a book for permanent reference as to the value of works sold at auction. The very copious Index which accompanies the volume adds very considerably to its value. 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."-Trübuer's Literary Record. Book-Prices Current: A RECORD OF THE PRICES AT WHICH BOOKS HAVE BEEN SOLD AT AUCTION, FROM DECEMBER, 1890, TO NOVEMBER, 1891. PREFACE. A GENERAL view of the sales by auction which have been held from December, 1890, to November, 1891, discloses very little out of the common, very little, that is to say, which can be regarded as essentially novel or of paramount importance. The most noticeable dispersion of the year was undoubtedly that of the Brayton Ives Library, which took place at New York in March, and realized rather more than £30,000. This splendid collection comprised many works which are but rarely brought to the hammer at the present day, and which, perhaps, not unnaturally, have come to be regarded as the aristocracy of the bookshelf. The desperate anxiety to secure rare works of the class more particularly alluded to, namely, early printed volumes illustrating the rise of the typographic art, or referring in some way or other to the early history of some country and its people, whose rugged and primitive virtues have built up for after ages the fabric of an empire, excites something more than a suspicion that these old and, for the most part, forgotten volumes are fast slipping away from private custody to that of the world's great public libraries, where they will, in the ordinary course of events, lie embalmed till they crumble into dust. The library antiquary may, however, seek comfort, if he can, in the bare reflection that the newest things grow old at last, and the book which is printed to-day may possibly in the lapse of years assume an importance we may certainly dream of, but which we can never hope to realize. Time works wonders, and circumstances, apparently accidental, may unite to glorify a book or to debase it. Any single volume of Book Prices Current contains much matter for future guidance, but more for present reflection, if only it be handled aright. 3, Plowden Buildings, Temple, E.C. J. H. S. |