Page 13 Advertisements Column 3

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18674, 24 April 1926, Page 13

A recent sale at Sotheby's took in the collection of the late Dr. A.. H. Japp, who, under his own name and a nom-de-plume, was a prolific author during the latter part of the last century. The most remarkable fact brought';out at the time was the high value attached to Tennyson's manuscripts. There were two sections of "The Idylls of the King"; that of ",Pelleas and Ettare." on twenty-six pages quarto, which fell at £320 to C. J. Sawyer, and that of "The Coming of Arthur," on twenty-three pagep quarto, which,was bought by Mr Spence* for ,£295. There were, two other Tennyson items, an unrecorded copy—two others only are known—-K)f the second "trial" edition of "The Lover's Tale," 1868,,.f0rty pages,, which sold for £77 (Maggs), and a presumably unique ."trial edition of " The La st Tournament," circa 1871, twenty-four pages, wluch brought £74 (Michelmore). Among some Stevenson documents the autograph MS. of the concluding portion of the preface of '' Familiar Studies of Men and Books," two and one-half pages folio, realised £9O (Spencer); a letter to Dr. Japp, referring to the publication in serial form of "Treasure Island" in "Young Folks," one page octavo, £7O (Hallidny); another to tlie same relating to the map in ure Island," ,£SO (Mafgs), and three others to the same, £sl ( Ma MO' fi3s (Michelmore) and £46 (Bpencer), respectively. Many readers will sympathise with this frank confession of second rateness by the author of a recent volume of literary criticism: It is doubtless my limitation, but it is, nevertheless, certainly true that the lesser figures in art have always succeeded in arousing my interest to a higher degree than the greater figures lam quite willing to subscribe to the superior genius of Beethoven and Milton, but I prefer to listen to Scarlatti and to read the slighter works of Thomas Love Peacock. It is the odd, the charming, the glamorous, often the oldfashioned, volume which has the compelling power with me. lam aware of the importance of Joseph Conrad, but while others read Lord Jim I find a warmer pleasure in rambling through formal literary gardens no longer popular, in strolling along deserted auctorial shores, as I have wandered through tbosedead villages which during their proper season have been frequented by so many fashionable feet. In "Forty Years in My Bookshop," in "Chambers's Journal," Mr "Walter Spencer 6ays that '"Desperate Remedies," "Under the Greenwood Tree," and "A Pair of Blue Eyes" were utter failures. Tinsley, Hardy's publisher, printed five hundred copies of each of theee novels, and less than twenty were sold. The remainder, unbound, were bought in sheets by a barrow-man who hawked cheap books. Mr Spencer well remembers ■ seeing these treasures, roughly bound with ooarse brown paper, being offered to an unimpressed publio at fifteenpence a volume I Nowadays, a complete set of Hardy's first editions may with difficulty be purchased for toar hundred pounds."