excellent reprint and the original (the paper excepted).”
Burns.—The most amazing price ever realised for a modern book was that of £572 for “Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect. By Robert Burns. Kilmarnock, 1786.” The original price of this octavo volume was three shillings. The history of the very fine copy sold in Edinburgh in February 1898 is traced back about eighty years by a writer in Literature. In 1870 it was sold for six guineas to G. B. Simpson, of Dundee, who sold it in 1879, with some other books, to A. C. Lamb for £124. The price of the Kilmarnock Burns has steadily advanced from £3, 10s. in 1858 to £111 in 1888, and then it made the immense leap to £572.
Byron.—“Poems on Various Occasions” (Newark, 1807, 8vo) sold at Alfred Crampton’s sale for £45. “The Waltz” (1813, pp. 27), published without a wrapper at 3s., sold at the same sale