- About Bookbinding -

Gowans issued scores of catalogues of his stock, in which titles were often
illustrated by notes, always curious and often amusing, credited to "Western
Memorabilia," a work which no bookseller or man of letters had ever heard of,
but which was shrewdly suspected to have been a projected scrap-book of the
observations and opinions of William Gowans.
There was another eccentric book-dealer's shop in Nassau street kept by one
John Doyle, who aimed so high in his profession as to post over his door a sign
reading "The Moral Centre of the Intellectual Universe." This establishment was
notably full of old editions of books of English history and controversial theology.
The most famous second-hand book-shop in Boston was Burnham's, whose
fore-name was Thomas Oliver Hazard Perry, shortened into "Perry Burnham" by
his familiars. He was a little, pale-faced, wiry, nervous man, with piercing black
eyes and very brusque manners. In old and musty books, he lived and moved
and had his being, for more than a generation. He exchanged a stuffy, narrow
shop in Cornhill for more spacious quarters in Washington
street, near School street, where he bought and sold books with an assiduous
devotion to business, never trusting to others what he could do himself. He was
proud of his collection and its extent. He bought books and pamphlets at
auction literally by the cart-load, every thing that nobody else wanted being bid
off to Burnham at an insignificant price, almost nominal. He got a wide
reputation selling cheaply, but he always knew when to charge stiff price for a
book, and to stIck to It. Once when I was pricing a lot of miscellaneous books
picked out for purchase, mostly under a dollar a volume, we came to a copy of
"The Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America," 1st edition,
Philadelphia, 1781, of which two hundred copies only were printed, by order of
Congress. This copy was in the original boards, uncut, and with the autograph
of Timothy Pickering on the title page. “If the Congress Library wants that
book," said Mr. Burnham, "it will have to pay eight dollars for it." I took it, well
pleased to secure what years of search had failed to bring. The next year my
satisfaction was enhanced when an inferior copy of the same book was offered
at twenty dollars.
Burnham died a wealthy man, having amassed a million dollars in trade and by
rise in real estate, as he owned the land on which the Parker House stands in
Boston.
Among Philadelphia dealers in second-hand books, one John Penington was
recognized as most intelligent and honorable. He was a book-lover and a
scholar, and one instinctively ranked him not as a bookseller, but as a
gentleman who dealt in books. On his shelves one always found books of
science and volumes in foreign languages.
Another notable dealer was John Campbell, a jolly, hearty Irish-American, with a
taste for good books, and an antipathy to negroes, as keen as the proverbial
hatred of the devil for holy water. Campbell wrote a book entitled "Negromania,"
published in 1851, in which his creed was set forth in strong language. He was a
regular bidder at book auctions, where his burly form and loud voice made him a
prominent figure.
Of notable auction sales of books, and of the extravagant prices obtained for
certain editions by ambitious and eager Competition, there is little room to treat.
The oft-told story of the Valdarfer Boccaccio of 1471, carried off at the
Roxburghe sale in 1812, at £2,260 from Earl Spencer by the Marquis of
Blandford, and re-purchased seven years after at another auction for £918, has
been far surpassed in modern bibliomania. "The sound of that hammer," wrote
the melodramatic Dibdin, "echoed through Europe:" but what would he have
said of the Mazarin Bible of Gutenberg and Fust (1450-55) sold in 1897, at the
Ashburnham sale, for four thousand pounds, or of the Latin Psalter of Fust and
Schoeffer, 2d ed. 1459, which brought £4,950 at the Syston Park sale in 1884?
This last sum (about twenty-four thousand dollars) is the largest price ever yet
recorded as received for a single volume. Among books of less rarity, though
always eagerly sought, is the first folio Shakespeare of 1623, a very fine and
perfect copy of which brought £716.2 at Daniel's sale in 1864. Copies warranted
perfect have since been sold in London for £415 to £470. In New York, a perfect
but not "tall" copy brought $4,200 in 1891 at auction. Walton's "Compleat
Angler," London, 1st ed. 1653, a little book of only 250 pages, sold for £310 in
1891. It was published for one shilling and sixpence. The first edition of
Bbbinson Crusoe brought £75 at the Crampton sale in 1896.

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