It is interesting to see how the values of certain books have risen
—sometimes amazingly—or fallen— in real terms (taking inflation into account)over a long period. The following twelve titles, advertised for sale at a discount in a full page advert taken out by Edward Baker’s Great Bookshop in John Bright Street, Birmingham, in an issue of the Bookman for June 1909, represent a selection of some of those works that have risen most in value by today’s standards.
Because the bookseller of 1909 describes them as ‘ in new condition’, the retail values sampled from Abebooks today are for those books graded as being in very good or excellent condition. In all cases the 1909 discounted prices are recorded side-by-side with those taken from Abebooks.
Inigo Triggs, Art of Garden Design in Italy (1906) 21s. £480
Rev. J.M.Bacon, The Dominion of the Air (1902) 2s. £92
Edward Clodd, Tom Tit Tot (1898) 2s. £87
Complete Works of Edward Fitzgerald £3 3s. £100
Octave Uzanne, Fashions in Paris (1901) 6s.6d. £180
R.N.Hall, Great Zimbabwe (1905) 6s.6d. £150
Morrison’s Lonely Summer in Kashmir (1904) 4s 6d £167
A.E.Waite(ed), Hermetic and Alchemical Writings 21s. £1,046
of Paracelsus the Great (1894)
C.V.A Peel, Somaliland (1900) 4s £2,092
Pitt-Rivers, Antique Works of Art from Benin (1900) 5s. £95
Sweet and Knox, On an Mexican Mustang through Texas (1905) 3s. £125
Schilling, In Wildest Africa (1907) 12s. £343
[R.M.Healey]