CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/Prices of BooksPublic
Page 196 of 297
Table of Contents

CHAPTER IX PRICES OF EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE

person has altered the price it fetched at Vincent’s sale to £199, 15s. by the addition of the figure 1. Fuller Maitland (1885), £165—Quaritch (described as a second edition in the catalogue, three leaves in facsimile).

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, first edition (12).

J. West (1773), £47, 15s.—George III. J. Ratcliffe (1776), £6. White Knights supplementary sale (1820), £31, 10s.—T. Payne (imperfect); not recorded by Blades.

The highest price recorded by Blades is £300, given by Mr. Huth at Lilly’s sale, 1861. In 1896 two copies (both imperfect) were sold for over £1000; Mrs. Corbet’s (Barlaston Hall), wanting nineteen leaves, £1020; R. E. Saunders (wanting only two leaves, a few wormed, lower margins in Melibeus mended), £1880. Earl of Ashburnham (1897), £720—Pickering & Chatto (imperfect, also some leaves from a shorter copy).

—— Second edition (57).

Brand’s imperfect copy (1807) was bought by Heber for 10 guineas; it was sold at his sale in 1834 to the Earl of Ashburnham for £78, 15s. Lord Ashburnham (1897), £300—Pickering and Chatto (wanting twenty-eight leaves).

Boethius de Consolacione Philosophiæ, translated by Chaucer (25).

B. Worsley (1678), 5s. J. West (1773), £5, 10s.—G. Mason. J. Ratcliffe (1776), £4, 6s.—George III. S. Alchorne (1813), bought by the Marquis of Blandford (Spencer duplicate, imperfect) for £53, 11s.; sold to Watson Taylor, at his sale in 1819, for £22, 11s. 6d.; at Taylor’s sale (£1823) Thorpe bought it for £13, 5s.

Thorpe bought a copy in old Oxford calf from Browne Willis’s library, “without the slightest defect or repair,” for £59 in July 1849, and he sold it in December of the same year for £105.

196