Henry Wheatley - Prices of Books

The late Professor J. Henry Middleton referred to this matter of cost in his valuable work on “Illuminated Manuscripts” (1892). After quoting from Aulus Gellius, he wrote—

“But ordinary copies of newly-published works, even by popular authors, appear to have been but little more expensive than books of this class are at the present day. The publisher and bookseller Tryphon could sell Martial’s first book of Epigrams at a profit for two denarii—barely two shillings in modern value (see Mart. xiii. 3). It may seem strange that written manuscripts should not have been much more costly than printed books, but when one considers how they were produced, the reason is evident. Atticus, the Sosii, and other chief publishers of Rome, owned a large number of slaves, who were trained to be neat and rapid scribes. Fifty or a hundred of these slaves could write from the dictation of one reader, and thus a small edition of a new volume of Horace’s Odes or Martial’s Epigrams could be produced with great rapidity, and at very small cost” (p. 19).

In the fifteenth century, even, illustrated Books of Hours were produced in France, Flanders, and Holland at a cheap rate. Mr. Middleton wrote—

“Education had gradually been extended among various classes of laymen, and by the middle of the fifteenth century it appears to have been usual not only for all men above the rank of artizans to be able to read, but even women of the wealthy bourgeois class could make use of prayer-books. Hence arose a great demand for pictured Books of Hours , which appear to have been produced in enormous quantities by the trade scribes of towns, such as Bruges, Paris, and many others. These common manuscript Hours are monotonous in form and detail; they nearly always have the same set of miniatures, which are coarse in detail and harsh in colour” (p. 141).

Mr. Middleton gives some further information respecting the cost of production of certain service-books taken from some church records in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—

“From these accounts (1379-1385) we learn that six manuscripts were written, illuminated, and bound, one of them with gold or silver clasps or bosses, at a total cost of £14, 9s. 3d., more than £150 in modern value” (p. 222). “Three Processionals only cost £1, 17s. 4d., being on forty-six quaternions of cheap parchment made of sheepskin, which cost only 2½d. the quaternion” (p. 223).

There was thus great variety of cost in the production of the various kinds of books, but when we consider the matter, we shall find it impossible to do other than believe that a demand for service-books, the price of which was not prohibitive, must have existed.

The Rev. T. Hartwell Horne gave in his “Introduction to Bibliography” some instances of the prices of manuscripts in the Middle Ages, but as some of these were evidently exceptional cases, although they have been used by historians to draw conclusions which we must consider as erroneous, they need not be repeated here.

Dr. S. R. Maitland in his admirable work on the “Dark Ages” comments with much acuteness on some of these cases as quoted by Dr. Robertson, and shows that the historian has drawn a general conclusion from special instances, which in certain cases have not been correctly reported. Maitland adds that some writer a few centuries hence might—

“Tell his gaping readers … that in the year 1812 one of our nobility gave £2260 and another £1060 for a single volume, and that the next year a Johnson’s Dictionary was sold by public auction to a plebeian purchaser for £200. A few such facts would quite set up some future Robertson, whose readers would never dream that we could get better reading, and plenty of it, much cheaper at that very time. The simple fact is, that there has always been such a thing as bibliomania since there have been books in the world, and no member of the Roxburghe Club has yet equalled the Elector of Bavaria, who gave a town for a single manuscript” (pp. 66-7).

Interesting particulars respecting the composition, binding, and expenses of Petrarch’s library will be found in M. de Nolhac’s monograph on the subject. Petrarch kept copyists in his house, whose shortcomings occasioned him much vexation. He bequeathed his library to Venice, and the Venetians are accused of having suffered it to be dispersed, but it would seem that it never reached them.

We may judge from the immense number of manuscripts still existing, in spite of the wholesale destruction that occurred at various times, how large was the output in the Middle Ages. It is therefore preposterous to suppose that when books were being produced in large numbers in hundreds of monasteries in Europe they were only bought by kings or great nobles.

During the troubled times of the Barons’ Wars there must have been great destruction of literary treasures, and at the Reformation, when whole libraries were destroyed and made waste-paper of, the ignorant waste was appalling. “The splendid and magnificent abbey of Malmesbury, which possessed some of the finest manuscripts in the kingdom, was ransacked, and its treasures either sold, or burnt to serve the commonest purposes of life. An antiquary who travelled through that town many years after the dissolution, relates that he saw broken windows patched up with remnants of the most valuable MSS. on vellum, and that the bakers hadn’t even then consumed the stores they had accumulated in heating their ovens.” 14 14 “Letters from the Bodleian,” vol. i. p. 279 (note). That so much is left after the wholesale raid on the monasteries is largely due to the sound antiquarian taste of John Leland, to whom we of later ages are supremely indebted.

In all times of political convulsions the learning of the world stands a bad chance of escaping great loss, and we are told that twenty-five thousand manuscripts were burnt during the horrors of the French Revolution.

Carelessness and the contempt felt for old books are still the great destructive forces in the East, and the Hon. Robert Curzon, who travelled in search of manuscripts, gives in his “Visits to the Monasteries in the Levant” (1849) a lively account of the irreparable losses that are constantly occurring. (See also Archdeacon Tattam’s and M. Pacho’s narratives of their negotiations with the monks of the Nitrian Desert for Syrian MSS., and the subsequent experiences of Tischendorf and Mrs. Lewis.) One of the most recent literary events is the recovery of a number of Jewish manuscripts from a Genizah or storehouse of old papers and parchments at Cairo, where they were preserved indeed, but entirely neglected.

The late Mr. Thorold Rogers paid considerable attention to the prices of books, and recorded many valuable facts respecting them in his important work, “History of Agriculture and Prices in England.” After commenting on some prices in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, he adds, “such prices indicate that written literature was not wholly inaccessible to the general public” (vol. i. p. 646).

The particulars of the cost of church books give perhaps the best idea of prices, because these were needed by a large number of the population. Some of them were of small price, while others of a more elaborate character were of great price. In the year 1278 the bailiff of Farley spent six shillings and eightpence for books for the church, and in 1300 the monks of Ely paid six shillings for a Decretal , and two shillings for Speculum Gregorianum . In 1329 the precentor received six shillings and sevenpence, with an instruction to go to Balsham to purchase books. 15 15 Putnam’s “Books and their Makers,” 1897, vol. i. p. 159. In 1344 a Bible cost three pounds, and in 1357 a book was bought for Farley church for four shillings.