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Book-Prices Current.

BOOK-PRICES CURRENT,

VOLUMES I. TO XIII.

Being a Record of the Prices at which Books have been sold at Auction during the years 1887 to 1899, with the Titles and Descriptions of the Books in full, the Catalogue Numbers, and the Names of the Purchasers.

Some of the earlier volumes are out of print and others are at a premium. Reports will be made by the publisher in answer to queries.

Opinions of the Press.

"Book-Prices Current-the Whitaker's Almanack of book-buyers and booksellers."-Illustrated London News.

"A very useful and admirably edited and printed publication.”—Morning Post.

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"To praise Book-Prices Current' is unnecessary; it has become indispensable to book collectors, and of vital interest to all who care for literature."-Globe.

"Brunet, indeed, so long the book-buyer's chief delight, must yield to 'Book-Prices Current.'"-Notes and Queries.

Its own

"It is beyond comparison the book-collector's cyclopædia. earlier volumes, curiously enough, command very high prices."-Daily Chronicle.

"The practical utility to buyers and sellers of an authoritative annual work of reference like this requires no demonstration. The knowledge and skill displayed in this compilation merit cordial recognition."Standard.

"To all classes of bookmen, the issues of 'Book-Prices Current' may be fairly pronounced indispensable."-Literary World.

"It may be said without exaggeration that the annual volumes of Mr. Slater's admirable compilation are indispensable to such as desire to follow with any closeness the record of sales and the movements of the secondhand book market."-Times.

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This

"Valuable to booksellers, and still more so to book-buyers. useful work has long established its position, and must have saved many a collector a bad bargain."-Athenæum.

"The work supplies a finely printed record which will be valued, not by the bookseller merely, but by the collector and librarian."-Daily Telegraph. "The book collector's Bible."-Pall Mall Gazette.

"The record is extremely useful for buyers and collectors of books, and is a valuable index to current phases of book-collecting, and to fluctuations in the market."-Saturday Review.

Book-Prices Current:

RECORD OF THE PRICES AT WHICH BOOKS

HAVE BEEN SOLD AT AUCTION,

FROM OCTOBER, 1899, TO JULY, 1900,
BEING THE SEASON 1899-1900.

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ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.,

INTRODUCTION.

THE season, just closed, can boast of no great sales like those of the Crawford, Makellar, Ashburnham, or Morris Libraries in our own time and many others which are matters of history, yet its record should not be neglected on that account, nor the experience which can be gathered from details allowed to pass unheeded. The fourteenth volume of BOOK-PRICES CURRENT is unique in one respect; it covers a period coinciding with that devoted to a war of considerable magnitude which engrossed men's minds to the virtual exclusion of other things, important enough in themselves, no doubt, but relegated to the background for the time being by universal consent. It would, naturally enough, have been thought extremely injudicious for the owner of any large and very important Library to dispose of it by auction under such circumstances, since he would have no means of knowing whether provision for the sinews of war and the incidental demands made upon the pockets of all classes of society would not have the effect of lowering the prices of luxuries, among which may be numbered those rare and expensive books which are gradually, but surely, being absorbed by the great Public Libraries, and will soon be altogether unprocurable. It was this consideration, probably, that caused owners of valuable libraries to hold back, as it were, to a more favourable opportunity; but whatever the reason, it is clear that the close of the year 1899 and the first few months of this were occupied, to a very great extent, in selling books of no great interest; and it is also certain

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