The years 1893 and 1894 I take to be those in which people, despairing of obtaining their heart's desire, turned their attention to what were known 'Limited Editions,' and raged furiously. Nothing but a thorough grasp of the state of the book-market at the time, and a deep insight into human nature, could have hit upon the 'Limited Edition' as a stop-gap, and those who invented it are entitled to every credit for their enterprise. The apology for the life of the 'Limited Edition' brought to its logical conclusion was this: Times have changed, and, moreover, more people buy books than formerly, whether to read or to store. With the readers we have nothing to do, except incidentally; but so far as the collectors are concerned, it is obvious that only about one out of every ten can afford to pay the extremely high prices demanded for most of the first editions of the authors of repute which they affect.
Now comes the point, and upon this the whole argument succeeds or fails. Do they want these coveted books to read or to accumulate? If they wish to read them they can do so at any time, for there are more editions than one in the majority of instances, and the demand for the later and cheaper ones is of a different character altogether; ergo, they really want them, though they would perhaps be highly indignant if we said so, to possess and not necessarily to read. Let us, therefore, make new books in the image of the old, decorating them artistically, and printing them in the best possible style. Let us cut down the edition to a very small number of copies, in order to keep it out of the hands of all but just enough buyers to make the venture pay well, and we ought to succeed in establishing a furore that will continue precisely as long as the strenuous efforts to obtain time-tried poems and essays remain futile by reason of their cost.
The venture was purposely confined to poems and essays, because literary wares of this kind good enough for the purpose could be bought for next to nothing. A novel, in order to compete on this particular ground with the older works of Ainsworth, Thackeray, and the rest, would be costly to buy in manuscript, and difficult as well as expensive to produce; and, moreover, novels never pay unless they are sold in large quantities. This argument was sound throughout, and, moreover, a fresh departure of some kind was inevitable, if only to stem the tide that flowed so aggressively in favour of the rich. The venture succeeded, for almost on the instant the collector, casting a lingering look behind on the expensive works for which he craved, turned away from them, and welcomed the 'dainty volumes of delicious verse' which came tumbling down in almost endless variety. There was a scramble for them which continued exactly as long as had been predicted, namely, until the prices of once coveted books began to fall, and then the 'Limited Editions' fell too, and the craze was over, for the present at least.