RETAIL AND AUCTION
1676 - 1800
& & &
Preface
In 1994, soon after becoming
Director of the
Because of my
responsibility for the editing of the thousands of texts reproduced by
Chadwyck-Healey for the Nineteenth
Century project at the British Library, work on checking the Burney films
slowed appreciably between 1992 and 1997, the year in which I retired from
London University. Since then I have managed to accumulate several boxes of
notes based on examination of the Burney microfilms over a period of many
years. No one who has not undergone this mind-numbing experience can begin to
appreciate the difficulties of carrying out large-scale research using microfilm!
Since 1960 I calculate that I have scanned over 500,000 pages of advertisements
in newspapers either in original format or on microfilm. In December 2007 I
began sorting this massive archive of notes into a publishable form, and I
expect to finish the task by the end of 2008.
This contribution to the history of British
auction and retail catalogues seeks to enhance what was achieved by the
compilers of the British Museum List of
Catalogues of English Book Sales, compiled by Harold Mattingley and I.A.K.
Burnett and edited by A.W. Pollard published in 1915, and particularly the copy
of this catalogue as annotated by A.N.L. Munby (a photocopy of the original at
Cambridge University Library is
available in the British Library); John Lawler’s Book Auctions in England in the Seventeenth Century (1676-1700), London,
1898; and A.N.L. Munby and Lenore Coral, British
Book — Catalogues, 1676-1800, published in 1977. Titles are given
(they are absent in Munby-Coral); copies are located (often missing in both
ESTC and Munby-Coral); pagination is provided (absent in Munby-Coral); but,
most important, evidence from advertisements in newspapers has been added:
evidence which gives an accurate account of the time taken to sell the books,
and therefore some idea of the size of the collections and the public interest
in them. Where possible owners have been identified, though a substantial
number remain unidentifed, especially where the source gives little more than
the fact that the owner’s name was Smith, and that he was a learned and
Reverend member of the Church of England clergy; or simply a “Doctor”. The
clergy are a primary problem, because over 70% of the owners of books recorded
here were clerics. One day projects like CCEd
will complete the task of making available the vast resources available
in the Church of England archives, and simplify the task of providing an
identity for the many unidentified clerics recorded here.
In some respects
Munby-Coral is basically a finding-aid: the data provided is minimal. ESTC,
while superior in some respects, nevertheless suffers from strict adherence to
the the principles implicit in Anglo-American
Cataloguing Rules (AACR2). Principally, the rules necessitate entries being
made under the auctioneer or retailer (presumed to be the “author” of the
catalogue for the sale). It would have been preferable to provide for each sale
where owners are known an added entry, thereby making it easy to identify
catalogues in online library catalogues. I have included in my listing indexes
for owners, and provided additional formation on booksellers stated in
advertisements to be responsible for the distribution of printed catalogue.
ESTC overlooks completely the names of owners; and what is unforgivable,
frequently fails to record the names of owners other than the first! I give
British Library and other shelfmarks (many are not given in ESTC) because they
are a sure way of retrieving most ESTC records.
I had for many years
suspected that a thorough check of the Burney and Nichols newspapers would
reveal much about publishing and printing, and the files I have accumulated
over the years bear ample witness to this. I have found evidence for hundreds
of items in my Bibliography of the
English Language for which no copies appear to survive; for a substantial
number of circulating and other libraries recorded before 1800 not in the
conventional histories, and as yet not incorporated in my Library History
Database; and several hundred retail and auction sales of books owned by
British collectors not recorded in any of the usual inventories. For the period
between 1676 and 1726 the number of sales not previously recorded in
Munby-Coral is over 1,100. The total number of entries is 4,135.
At an early stage in
carrying out this project I decided to exclude sale catalogues which were based
on private collections purchased by booksellers, but for which no owners are
named. I have kept a tally of these over the years, and this catalogue would
have been almost twice the size had they been included! The purchase of private
libraries by booksellers began almost as soon as sale catalogues became part of
the book trade landscape in the 1680s. By the middle of the eighteenth century
the number of these had grown considerably. Osborne, for example, re-distributed
during his career as a bookseller well over two million books! The number of
books re-distributed by Baker and Leigh
- the “founders” of Sothebys - and James Christie has never been calculated,
but certainly exceeded Osborne’s remarkable total.
The first newspaper was,
as is well known, the London Gazette,
the first number of which appeared in February 1666, earlier published at
It is gratifying to note
that I have found advertisements for the great majority of catalogues listed
here, except for some early entries, and in most cases these advertisements
contain information not available in the usual sources, such as the names of
booksellers participating in the distribution of printed catalogues, and their
addresses. In more than a few instances the advertisements enable corrections
to be made to the entries in Lawler, BM, ESTC and Munby-Coral, including
incorrect dating (usually when guessed). My estimate for the number of sales
not previously recorded for the period to 1800 exceeds two thousand. For a
relatively small number of sales I record “No advertisements in newspapers
traced”, due in part I suspect to the imperfect surviving examples of many
newspapers.
Since my principal aim
when I started this huge undertaking was to document libraries by known owners
I have not included here trade catalogues of books issued by booksellers where
the provenance is simply “a gentleman gone abroad”, or “learned and
reverend divine”. I have similarly
excluded sales of miscellaneous collections put together by booksellers from a
wide variety of sources, some of which were “over sea”. Although I did keep a
count of these as I found them in the course of reading through the Burney
newspapers, to have included them would have more than doubled the size of this
catalogue. My estimate for the total number of sales of books where the owners
are stated for which I have found evidence and which are not included in Lugt,
ESTC or Munby-Coral is over 1,700. To this I would have had to add at least
another 1,000+ for trade catalogues. Another category of evidence are
advertisements for household goods and furniture which include book-cases which
begin to appear after 1710, and since it is a reasonable assumption that an
owner selling his book-cases had made other arrangements for the books I have
included such sales in this inventory. I have not, however, included sale of
book-cases advertised by cabinet and furniture makers, as these would represent
stock-in-trade.
The entries are virtually
self-explanatory, though brief. Every effort has been made to trace the basic facts
regarding the owners who were members of the clergy, physicians and surgeons,
lawyers and members of the Inns, members of Parliament, and the nobility. But
there are considerable difficulties with common names like Brown and Smith!
Since advertisements usually provide the names of booksellers associated with
the distribution of catalogues and bidding for books on behalf of those not
able to attend a sale, these have been included. Catalogues were also, of
course, distributed by coffee-houses, and this is duly noted. I have used BBTI
to identify booksellers, but in many cases the data provided in that
database makes positive identification impossible. In many instances I give the
information exactly as found in the advertisement (“Mr. Smith in the
Much, of course, remains to
be done before we can have a complete account of book sales for known or
reliably attributed owners. While collections like Burney and Nichols give a
wide coverage, the scanning of provincial newspapers has not proven possible,
but I trust that some intrepid scholar
will be able, with adequate financial support, to scan the newspapers known to
exist for
It is my happy duty to
offer my thanks to all those librarians who have, for fifty years now, suffered
patiently my endless enquiries about books and newspapers not just for this
project, but for my Bibliography of the
English Language, which has covered the holdings of over one thousand
libraries. At present my unpublished Tabula
Gratulatoria lists over two hundred, of whom just five are still alive!
Introduction
& & &
Bibliographical
References
Abbreviations: ESTC - the English Sort Title Catalogue on the
British Library File; Lawler – John Lawler, Book
Auctions in England in the Seventeenth Century, London, 1898; BM – British
Museum, List of Catalogues of English
Book Sales 1676-1900, London, 1915; Munby-Coral – A.N.L. Munby & Lenore
Coral, British Book —Catalogues,
1676-1800: a Union List, London, 1977. CCEd – online database of records
for the clergy of the Church of England; BBTI – the British Booktrade Index,
online file maintained at Birmingham University; SBTI – the Scottish Book Trade
Index, online file maintained at the National Library of Scotland; O.D.N.B. – the online version of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
maintained by the Oxford University Press; Alston – A Bibliography of the English Language, Volumes I-XXI, 1965 +.
An Appendix
to Chronica Juridicialia, viz. from 1685, to 1739. London, 1739. A supplement to
Dugdale’s Chronica Juridiialia,
published in 1685, and reprinted in 1739.
Baker, J.H. The Order of Serjeants at Law: a Chronicle of Creations, with
Related Texts and a Historical Introduction. London, Selden Society, 1984.
Baker, William & K.
Womack, Pre-Nineteenth-Century Book
Collectors and Bibliographers; Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 213.
Detroit, 1999.
Chalmers-Hunt, J.M. Natural History auctions 1700-1972. A
register of sales in the British Isles. London, 1976.
Doyle, A.I. “Sale Catalogues”, Durham Philobiblon, 1951-1969.
Foss, Edward. Biographia Juridica. A Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England.
London, 1870.
Foster, Joseph. Alumni Oxonienses. Oxford, 1888-1891. 8 vols.
Guerra, Francisco. American Medical Bibliography, 1639-1783.
New York, 1962.
Hazlitt, William C. A Roll of Honour. A Calendar of the name of
of over 17,000 men and women who throughout the British Isles and in our early
colonies have collected MSS. and Printed Books. London, 1908. The British
Library has Hazlitt’s own copy interleaved with added materials –
Cup.410.g.343.
Lugt, Frits. Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l’art ou la
curiosité. 1600-1825. La Haye, 1938. Also available online.
McDonald, William R. “Book-Auctions
and Book-Sales in the Aberdeen Area, 1749-1800”, Aberdeen University Review, xlii, pt. 2, Autumn, 1967, pp. 114-132.
McKay, George L. American Book Auction Catalogues 1713-1934.
A Union List. New York, 1937.
Medvei, Victor C. & John L.
Thornton, The Royal Hospital of Saint
Bartholomew 1123-1973. London, 1974.
Newell, Philip. Greenwich Hospital: a Royal Foundation: 1692-1983. [Holbrook],
1984.
O’Kelley, Francis.”Irish Book-Sale
Catalogues before 1801.” Bibliographical Society of
Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography. Available in print and online. Cited as O.D.N.B.
Peile, John. Biographical Register of Christ’s College, 1505-1905. 2 vols.
Cambridge, 1910-1913. Edited by John Venn.
Pollard, Graham & Albert Ehrman.
The disatrib ution of books by catalogue
from the invention to A.D. 1800. Cambridge, Roxburghe Club, 1965.
Rosner, Lisa M. Medical Education in the Age of Improvement: Edinburgh Students and
Apprenctices 1760-1826. Edinburgh, 1991.
Royal College of Surgeons. English Books printed before 1701 in the
Library of the Royal College of Surgeons. Edinburgh, 1963.
Scottish
Book Trade Index
– online at the National Library of Scotland. Cited as S.B.T.I.
Swaim, Elizabeth. “The auction as a
means of book distribution in Eighteenth-Century Yorkshire.” Publishing History, No. 1, 1977.
Winans, Robert B. A descriptive Checklist of Book Catalogues
separately printed in America 1693-1800. Worcester, 1981.
McKay, George L. American Book Auction Catalogues, 1713-1934:
a Union List. New York, New York Public Library, 1937.
McKay, George L. “Additions to a
Union List of American Book Auction Catalogues”, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, L, 1946, 177-184.
Venn, John A. Alumni Cantabrigienses. Cambridge, 1922-1954. 10 vols.
Wood, Anthony à. Athenae Oxonienses. Ed. Philip Bliss.
London, 1813-1820. 4 vols.
In listing advertisements I have
omitted many specific dates where they occur in long sequences. In many
instances sales can be advertised on consecutive days for up to five weeks, and
in such cases the dates given are intended to demonstrate the overall spread.
It seemed to me pointless to list all the daily advertisements for a sale in up
to five newspapers. Booksellers’ names are given in the entries in the form as
printed in the advertisements. Where possible full names are supplied;
undetermined names are as given in the newspapers cited. Where lists of titles
are appended to advertisements these are noted.
Form of
Entry
1.
Owner: name/names + date of sale
(where known) + references to standard sources such as Lawler, Lugt, ESTC,
Muny-Coral, Winans, &c. + place of sale. Sales by auction could be held at
the auctioneer’s/bookseller’s address, or at the premises of the owner. The
latter was normal when the sale included household goods as well as books.
2.
Sources: The principal sources cited are STC and Wing for books printed before 1701; ESTC for books printed between 1475 and 1800. Other sources used
are listed above. Munby-Coral is cited for items reported in the
British Museum catalogue of sale catalogues (1915) and other sales identified
by A.N.L. Munby in his interleaved copy of the 1915 catalogue – the original
copy of this is in the Cambridge University Library, and a photocopy is
available in the British Library.
3.
Catalogue: title as given in the
printed catalogue where possible. In some cases copies which I have been unable
examine personally are given as reported to me in correspondence. If
photocopies were available I regard them as verified. There are are serious
problems which could not be resolved satisfactorily with the holdings of some
libraries, notably the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, some museum libraries
in Germany, France and Italy (generally reported in Lugt in very abbreviated
form); a few collections in Oxford and Cambridge colleges; and institutions in
Europe and North America which do not maintain an online catalogue. Where the
original title provides information about the owner this is included, a
practice seldom found in ESTC records.
4.
Bookseller/auctioneer(s):
Names as
given in printed catalogues or in advertisements. In many cases these are
unrecorded in BBTI or SBTI. Where there is evidence that named booksellers were
responsible for the distribution of printed sale catalogues these are given,
but the first name in the list is always that of the bookseller/auctioneer
primarily responsible for the sale, whether by auction or retail.
5.
Type of
6.
Copies: Where numerous copies are
known, only about ten are given. In cases where copies other than the primary
one record prices/buyers details are provided.
7.
Format: formats are given rather
than centimetre height; ESTC practice is followed.
8.
Notes: these conern details about owners
and other information, as well as references to standard sources, as listed
above.
9. Advertisements: references of advertisements traced, with notes where possible of advance notices of sale, or variant form