There is no doubt that the early editions of the English classics will get more and more valuable as time goes on. In the case of many it may be years before any decided rise in their sale-room price takes place; but as the number of book-collectors increases with the population, while the number of copies of these _desiderata_ tends to become less owing to the absorption of certain of them in the public libraries, so it is only natural that increased competition should result in a corresponding increase in their value.
The early editions of Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of the later Elizabethan and Stuart dramatists, which command but a few pounds to-day, will run, in all probability, well into three figures during the next half-century. A good copy of the first issue of Milton's 'Comus,' printed in 1637, could be had for £36 in 1864. In 1898 one with the title-page mended brought £150. Ten years later £317 was not thought excessive for it, whilst in 1916 a fine and perfect copy made £800. $14,250 was the ransom of a copy at New York in 1919.
Other books there are which have had similar meteoric rises in value. The first edition of Walton and Cotton's 'Compleat Angler' was published in 1653 at one and sixpence. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the average price for a fine copy seems to have been between three and four pounds. In 1850 so much as fifteen pounds was paid for a copy in a similar state. Thirty years later it had risen to eighty-five pounds, and during the few years following, the demand for it seems to have increased its value considerably, for in 1887 a copy realised no less than £200. But eight years later even this sum was easily doubled. Then came the Van Antwerp sale at Sotheby's. A perfect copy, in the original sheepskin binding, was offered; the hammer fell at the enormous figure of £1,290. This sum has not yet (1921) been eclipsed; but that it was not a fancy price[73] is shown by the fact that in 1909 a copy _not_ in the original binding realised no less than £1,085.
In the collection of these early impressions of the great writers, however, you must exercise considerable caution and judgment. The examples which I have quoted will show you that it is not always immediately, nor even within a lifetime from their death, that the works of our greatest authors become valuable. 'Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts,' wrote Sir George Mackenzie, and for literary fame Time is indeed the ordeal by fire. We may look upon the auction-room as a Court of Claims to Literary Fame, but it is public opinion, backing the authorities who sit round the table, that determines each claimant's case. It is the book that makes the price, not the price that makes the book. Doubtless those who, relying upon their own judgment alone, gave fifty pounds for Tennyson's 'Helen's Tower' (1861) some twenty years ago, thought they were safe in their investment. Yet twelve years later it could be had for thirty shillings. Fitzgerald's 'Polonius,' 1852, was once thought cheap at five guineas. To-day you may buy it for little more than a sovereign.