Bent’s General Catalogue of Books, issued in 1786, contained the titles of books published since 1700, and this was succeeded by the London Catalogue, which appeared for several years. The British and English catalogues followed, and the latter is published annually.
In order to obtain some idea of the varying prices at which books have been published, it will be well to enumerate a few at different periods, arranged under the different sizes of books.
FOLIOS
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, gave seven shillings in 1621 for Bacon’s work on Henry VII., and in 1624 £3, 6s. 8d. for four volumes of “Purchas’s Pilgrims.” The published price of the first edition of Shakespeare’s Plays is said to have been £1.
John Ogilby, who was one of the first projectors of grand illustrated books in large folio, found himself burthened with a heavy stock of expensive books which did not sell, so he hit upon the expedient of getting rid of them by means of a lottery, licensed by the Duke of York and the Assistants of the Corporation of the Royal Fishery. These books were an illustrated Bible, printed by John Field at Cambridge in 1660, two volumes folio; the “Works of Virgil,” translated by Ogilby, 1654; Homer’s “Iliads,” translated by Ogilby, 1660; Homer’s “Odysseys,” 1665. Pope frequently spoke in later life of the great pleasure Ogilby’s “Homer” gave him when a boy at school. “Æsop’s Fables paraphrased by Ogilby,” 1665; and Ogilby’s “Entertainment of Charles II. in his Passage through the City of London to his Coronation,” 1662—a splendid book, which is said to have proved of great service in succeeding coronations.