The Book Collector's Guide. A Practical Handbook of British and American Bibliography.

Cloth, 8vo, xviii, 648 pp. Approximately 4,000 entries. Intended to serve as a supplement to, and updating of, Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature : de Ricci included auction results and locations for many important works. "In this new Book Collector's Guide are described, in the alphabetical order of the authors, the two or three thousand British and American books which fashion has decided are the most desirable for the up-to-date collector.First of all and as the backbone of my work, I have sought to list, with a certain amount of completeness, the first editions of the chief works and in many cases of all the works of the greater British and American authors from Chaucer to Swinburne. .With a view to the great attention paid by modern collectors to English dramatic literature, I have endeavoured to be fairly complete in this direction and have included the first editions (but not the subsequent impressions) of practically all English plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.For English books before 1600, those which are chiefly of typographical interest have, in spite of their rarity and market value, been very sparingly included. For many of the more prolific authors of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, lack of space has compelled me to give but a selection of their works.Likewise, for modern writers, I have been in many cases extremely exclusive.Illustrated books have always appealed to collectors of every country. Due regard has been therefore paid to all English books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remarkable for the plates they contain, and particular care has been expended on the early nineteenth century books with coloured engravings. Admirers of Alken, Cruikshank, and Rowlandson will find here an ample selection of their works. Likewise Blake has been, with the kind assistance of Dr. Geoffrey Keynes, as fully listed as space permitted. Americana have received special attention and a number of valuable items have been entered, more with a view towards selective illustration than towards absolute completeness.The bulk of the other books included in this Guide consists of the numerous standard works 'no gentleman's library should be without,' sets, series, and single items consecrated by two centuries of fashion, found in all great British and American libraries and covering a variety of volumes from the stately county histories to the earliest Bradshaw, and Gould's or Audubon's ponderous ornithological folios.The object has always been to give enough to insure identification, but by no means to supply a full bibliographical description of every item. However, when variations occur between the copies of a particular edition, the fact has been usually noted and the "points" distinguishing the earliest issues placed on record. Collectors of nineteenth century volumes will frequently find noted the ex istence of a publisher's wrapper or cover. Collations have been systematically omitted (this again for sake of brevity), but the presence of portraits and frontispieces, the existence and number of plates has usually been carefully registered. For it must be kept in mind that this book, although compiled by a bibliographer, is not a bibliography but a collector's guide. The information given is such as a collector seems likely to require, the information omitted, such as he does not, as a rule, seem anxious to possess. " - from the introduction. "De Ricci's Guide is an endlessly instructive work for the student of evolution in collecting taste . . . De Ricci, a sort of condottiere operating on the frontiers between bibliography and bookselling, was a shrewd and experienced observer of the collecting world and therefore well fitted to give a faithful account of prevailing tastes." - Carter, Taste & Technique in Book Collecting. Fine.…