Note 117 — PART I. AMERICANA IN LIBRARIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

With these canons Mr. Quaritch’s prices can be understood. The extent and character of his stock can be inferred from the fact that his purchases at the Perkins sale (1873) amounted to £11,000; at the Tite sale (1874), £9,500; at the Didot sales (1878-1879), £11,600; and at the Sunderland sales (1883), £32,650, out of a total of £56,851. At the recent sales of the Beckford and Hamilton collections, which produced £86,444, over one half, or £44,105, went to Mr. Quaritch. These figures enable one to understand how, in a sense, Mr. Quaritch commands the world’s market of choice books. A sketch, B. Q., a biographical and bibliographical Fragment (1880, 25 copies), in the privately printed series of monographs issued to a club in London, of which Mr. Quaritch is president, called “The Sette of Odd Volumes,” has supplied the above data. The sketch is by C. W. H. Wyman, and is also reprinted in his Bibliography of Printing, and in the Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, November, 1882. One of the club’s “opuscula” (no. iii.) has an excellent likeness of Mr. Quaritch prefixed. Cf. also the memoir and portrait in Bigmore and Wyman’s Bibliography of Printing, ii. 230.