University of Virginia Library

The Booksellers' "Ring" at Strawberry Hill in 1842
by
A. T. Hazen

MANY AN inexperienced collector has observed with alarm what seem to be inexplicable fluctuations in the auction records of certain books: a good copy of a book consistently worth above a hundred dollars is suddenly knocked down for twenty or thirty dollars. He may be told that these fluctuations are part of the normal demand-supply market or that the sale was badly advertised and the copy badly described or that the copy in question was known by the trade to be defective. But since rumors of manipulation are wide-spread, he is likely also to suspect that this copy was knocked down cheaply by some pre- arranged plan. If the collector broods over such phenomena, he is likely to conclude that the auction markets for both books and securities exist chiefly as sheltered hunting areas for wolves and bears.

Now it is clear that short of outright dishonesty on the auctioneer's part no manipulation is possible when two or more collectors set out independently in pursuit of a book. Indeed, a constantly recurring phenomenon is the notably high price scored by a book because of intense competition: the Wilmerding Sales in New York in 1951 afforded numerous examples. And Horace Walpole's agent bid £49, at Dr. Mead's Sale in 1754, for a book worth less than £5, not because of any manipulation but because both Walpole and his rival had given instructions to buy the book at any price. When a collector complains about high prices, therefore, he is not charging manipulation in the usual sense; he is in effect confessing that his own enthusiasm led him on to injudicious heights, or, at worst, suggesting that persons unnamed raised his bids only to make him pay more for the book.[1]

The booksellers' "Ring," therefore, can operate to keep prices down only in the absence of firm bids from private collectors. The "Ring" can play no part on any lot for which one or more collectors may choose to bid, whether by mailed

bids, by commitments through dealers, or by direct action on the floor. This means in practice that the "Ring" can operate only in the distribution of books for stock, especially in the distribution of grouped items on which private collectors are less likely to bid. The method in itself is simple enough: the members of the "Ring" are dealers who would like to add to their stock various desirable groups of books from a particular auction; by agreement among themselves no member of the "Ring" will raise another member's bid; no great harm is done if an outsider bids higher, on a particular lot, than the insiders wish to go for stock; whatever lots fall to members of the "Ring" are then divided among the participating members at a private auction, the "Knock-out" or "Settlement." The effect is that ten books in a lot, worth something like $IO each, can all be purchased for $IO if no outsider wants to go higher for the lot because of a much-wanted item in the lot.

The principle on which the "Ring" works is simple enough. The participating booksellers (usually only five or six in London, but all dealers present at a country sale) agree before the sale not to bid against each other on lots wanted for stock. If then there is no serious outside competition, each desired lot falls to one member in the "Ring" at a moderate price. After the sale, the dealers in the "Ring" hold a private auction, called the "Knock-out" or "Settlement," of the lots bought in the public sale. The proceeds of this second sale (i.e., the difference between the total realized and the total paid for these same lots in the public sale) are then divided among themselves. The result is that a lot knocked down to a particular dealer in the public auction will be retained by him only if he wants it for stock more than do any of his associates, so that the announced purchaser at the public auction is very frequently not the final owner of the lot after the settlement. Another convenience is that members of the "Ring" can go high at no great cost to themselves on a few lots near the beginning, to help to frighten away brash outsiders.

Mr. John Carter has useful little notes on the "'Ring" in his Taste and Technique in Book-Collecting and in his ABC for Book-Collectors; he records that the practice was made illegal by Act of Parliament in 1927; "opinions vary as to their prevalence at book sales to-day." The law of 1927 applies only to dealers who purchase for resale. Mr. I. A. Williams, in his Elements of Book-Collecting in 1927 wrote:

Since my interest is wholly historical, I do not think I shall be accused of libel. Neither do I wish to concern myself with morality, or ethics-perhaps the booksellers in the "Ring" are no different ethically from two private collectors who agree in advance not to compete for certain desirable items and who therefore in effect agree to share the spoils. But it seems to me helpful, in examining the history of book auctions, to understand that, despite the operations of both dealers and private collectors who are outside the "'Ring," the plan can be applied effectively by a cohesive group of insiders. No outsider is interfered with when he wants any book more than the insiders want it; the outsider is able to buy and he is not penalized in price. But on any lot for which there is no outside bid, at least not above a nominal price, the "Ring" is completely effective, at a great saving in cost to the members. The loss has to be taken by the auction house and the consignor, but this may be more apparent than real: since the members of the "Ring" are among the leading dealers, and hence those who have sufficient capital to buy largely for stock, the bottom would soon drop out of the whole market if they failed to bid, but by the pooling of their bids they are in fact able to buy more lots for stock. The plan is therefore a decided advantage to the members of the "Ring," but it may be no very great hardship to the consignor.

The great Walpolian Sale at Strawberry Hill in 1842, by a fortunate combination of circumstances, affords sufficient evidence to document the working of the "Ring." In this sale, the members of the "Ring" were allowed "to appropriate books at a ridiculously low figure." Walpole's collection of books, coins, paintings, and memorabilia, housed in his little gingerbread castle, was one of the sights of London during his lifetime, and collectors were of course excited by the sale in 1842. Crowds came to see the collections, many grumbled at the inadequacies of the cataloguing, and an unusual number of individuals competed in the bidding from lot to lot. In the collection there was something for everyone, and there can be little doubt that many a collector wanted merely "something" from Strawberry Hill. But others, including Lord Derby, William Beckford, and W. H. Miller, bought heavily. The methods and results outlined above are clearly visible in the records of the sale. Desirable single items or small lots, for which one or more collectors entered bids, fetched suitable if not startling prices. Hawkins's History of Music cost £10.10.0; William Herbert's edition of Ames, £4-more than the same copy was worth in 1890; Pope's Shakespeare, £6.16.6; Morant's Essex, £6.6.0; Dugdale's Warwickshire, £17.17.0; Dart's Westminster, £5.5.0; Walpole's Description of the Villa, £18.10.0. Such books were sold to private collectors, knocked down after competition, and they are not out of line with other prices throughout the sale. But interspersed through the sale, usually when several good books are lumped in a lot, are hundreds of absurdly low prices, to dealers. Here are three characteristic and not unusual examples: three items in one lot (iii.49) sold to Pickering for 14/-, but priced at £4.13.0 when re- offered separately by Thorpe; six items in one lot (v.170) sold to Kerslake for 10/-, but re-offered separately by Thorpe for £3; three items in one lot (v.76) sold to Pickering for £1.2.0, but re-offered separately by Thorpe for £8.15.6.

The proof that these low prices were produced by an active "Ring" and not by chance failure of free competition is preserved in certain records of the resale

of identifiable lots; among them are the three lots cited above, all offered for resale by Thorpe although knocked down to Kerslake and Pickering at Strawberry Hill. The auctioneer printed a list of purchasers and prices after the sale, and its nearly complete accuracy is attested by a few contemporary notes of purchasers. (Many copies of the Sale Catalogue list the purchasers in MS merely by transcription from the printed list, but a few copies survive with notes made at the sale.) Any particular lot, therefore, is identifiable as sold to a private collector, to a dealer like Bohn or Boone known to be executing many private bids, or to a dealer who is presurnably bidding for stock. At least two dealers who purchased heavily for stock, Thorpe and Strong, published special catalogues soon afterwards of their stock of purchases from Strawberry Hill. It is chiefly from these two catalogues that six members of the "Ring" can be identified: Kerslake, Payne and Foss, Pickering, Rodd, Strong, and Thorpe.[2] Scattered through the records are multiple examples of each of the following types: (I) lots listed as sold to Kerslake but re-offered by Thorpe; (2) lots sold to Payne and Foss but re- offered by Strong; (3) lots sold to Payne and Foss but re-offered by Thorpe; (4) lots sold to Pickering but re-offered by Strong; (5) lots sold to Pickering but re-offered by Thorpe; (6) lots sold to Rodd but re-offered by Strong; (7) lots sold to Rodd but re-offered by Thorpe; (8) lots sold to Strong but re-offered by Thorpe; (9) lots sold to Thorpe but re-offered by Payne and Foss; (10) lots sold to Thorpe but re-offered by Strong; and (11) a single lot sold to Thorpe, one volume of which is now at Farmington with a purchaser's note "October 1842, from Kerslake." There seems no doubt that other types could be added if Kerslake, Pickering, or Rodd Catalogues of 1842 could be traced, or a Payne and Foss Catalogue earlier than 1845.

More detail seems scarcely necessary, especially since the detail can be supplied only by an itemized tracing of numerous books from the lots sold at Strawberry Hill through the special catalogues issued by Strong and Thorpe. The detail on which I have depended will appear in the Catalogue of Walpole's Library, now approaching completion. Not every book from every lot can be traced; but if a lot of about five items was sold to Strong whereas Strong's Catalogue contains none of them and Thorpe's contains three or four, it seems certain that Thorpe took over the lot in the "Knock-out" or "'Settlement" after the sale and then omitted from his own Catalogue any items he had sold from his shop during the summer. Since the function of the "Settlement" is in part to allow each participating dealer to select from the total those lots in which he has particular interest, that is, lots containing books he knows to be of interest to his regular customers, one would expect him to sell some books immediately. But the lots are kept together too consistently and completely to

allow any explanation other than the planned action of the "Ring"; the results can not be explained as the occasional direct purchase of an item from another dealer who was more alert at the auction.

Perhaps the chief interest of this episode, to others than Walpolian specialists, is the reminder that the method was normally in use in London until 1927 and that we are fortunate in a chance to examine its operation in 1842. Whether the auctioneer and consignor knew of its operation in 1842 or in any given sale is not of any special significance: books are to be dispersed to the highest bidder in public auction, and the books immediately wanted by individual collectors are secured in fair competition; but there must always be a large stock of books in the trade not immediately wanted by any individual collector, and the auction room distributes these within the trade for stock more or less according to the capital available to the different dealers. The London custom of bunching five to ten books each in very miscellaneous lots undoubtedly makes the "Ring's" program easier, but it also makes feasible the orderly distribution of such books; and the London market is therefore less vulnerable to the intermediate fluctuations of demand that disturb the New York method of praising each book as a collector's item.[3] In the sale at Strawberry Hill, eight thousand volumes were dispersed in eight sessions, twenty-five hundred of them in the Fifth Day alone, and relatively few were collector's items; clearly, most of these books were destined for stock in the general antiquarian or second-hand trade, where Walpole's bookplate might add a bit to the interest but where eventual absorption by private collectors would be exceedingly slow.

The second interest of this episode seems to me its illustration of the danger in any attempt to generalize about prices. Observers watching the sale spoke of the disappointing prices, and a bibliographer studying it will quickly judge that prices were astonishingly low. The temptation is therefore strong to generalize concerning the Corn-Law deflation and the subsidence of the Roxburghe fever. But this impression of low prices is produced by the spectacle of lot after lot of identifiably excellent books selling for only a tenth of their known retail value as the sum of the prices of the separate items. These are the lots in the bidding for which the "Ring" was operating, in the absence of private competition, to absorb the large mass of good but not splendid books into stock. The record of such prices has no real relation to the sum even of the wholesale values of the books in the lots; they are only the conveniently dignified prices (10/-, 14/; 21/-) beyond which no bid was entered by any collector or casual spectator. To study the value of books in 1842, or the 1842 price of Walpole's books, one must exclude all the miscellaneous lots that are listed as bought by any member of the "Ring." The auction prices of the rest will be found to be respectably satisfactory; and sometimes, when lifted by competition between collectors like Miller and Sir Thomas Phillipps, the prices were magnificent.

Notes