Trends in Collecting and Prices: Purchases at Auctions and from Bookdealers

UNDOUBTEDLY development in the field of chil- THE MOST OUTSTANDING dren’s literature in the last several years has been the tremendous growth in the number of collectors. This increased interest has been concentrated on late Victorian books and the popular color-plate books of Rackham, Nielsen, Dulac, Harry Clarke, Detmold, Parrish, Wyeth, Greenaway, and a few others. Only a few of the newcomers have any interest in historical chil-dren’s literature, but their influence is already felt in the area of modestly priced chapbooks from 1821 to 1850. The more gratifying and demanding areas have been largely ignored, but experience with these collectors in-dicates a slowly increasing interest in both English and American histori-cal books of the early nineteenth century and before. As has always been true in the book trade, collectors of important books are the extreme minority. The demands made on serious collectors in terms of time, energy, research, and requisite literary background are for only the comparatively few. Nevertheless, among the newcomers there is already perceptible interest in titles listed in d’AltC Welch’s A Bibliography of American Children’s Books Printed Prior to 1821. ’ Although this interest is still small, the rarity of these books causes any additional demand to be reflected in increased prices, a trend which will undoubtedly continue. Despite much misleading publicity portraying children’s books as one of the “hottest ” fields of collecting, prices are still modest when com-pared to almost any other area. Works by modem poets, whose reputa-tions are of questionable longevity, bring hundreds and even thousands o