Price data for Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1831-2015

This spreadsheet gathers all the evidence we have to date on the pricing of the Proceedings of the Royal Society (1831-1905) and its successor series A and B (1905-2015) Any attempt to analyse price trends over a long period of time must note that: Britain used the imperial system of currency (£ s d) until 1970, and then went decimal. The amount of printed material that the Royal Society issued 'per year' or 'per volume' varied considerably, and this is often the cause of the price variation (rather than, for instance, increases in the price of paper or printing). The Royal Society did not set its prices 'per year' until 1986. Prices before 1986 may be 'per issue' or 'per volume' (and there may be multiple volumes per year, or fractional volumes per year). The first tab in this workbook collates information on the prices of the 'volumes' of the Proceedings 1831-1905. A separate pair of columns recalculate that data, where possible, into a 'price for a year's-worth of printed matter' The second and third tabs give price data for Proceedings A and Proceedings B after 1905. In each tab, there is a conversion to 'price for a year's worth of printed matter'. There is also a column showing the prices adjusted for inflation (normalised to 2010£) The final tab has the deflation adjuster data, from MeasuringWorth.com The sources from which these prices are gathered are eclectic. The Royal Society has no master list of prices. Occasionally, prices were mentioned in the Royal Society Council Minutes (RS/CMO or RS/CMP) The ledgers of the Taylor & Francis archive were useful for the period when T&F printed for the Royal Society (i.e. 1828-77) The English Catalogue of Books (ECB) was useful for the late nineteenth century