According to antiquarians, the collection of old Hungarian books is largely stagnant. Owners of existing collections are still willing to pay large sums of money for a rarity that is still missing from their collections, but there are no new book collectors who collect with expertise, competence, and within predetermined frameworks and periods.
In addition to the bookselling route, auctions were also a very significant means of growth for our library in this century, until the 1950s.
It is reported from London that, by order of King Edward, an accurate inventory is currently being taken of the movables and other collections in all the halls and rooms of Windsor Palace.
The magazine "The Concisseur", edited for amateurs, publishes a valuable compilation of art historical auctions held in England from December 1903 to July of last year, the data on books of which interestingly show the perpetual ebb and flow of the passion for collecting.
The bibliophile passion, which is a rare bird in our country, has reached unprecedented proportions abroad. There are real hunts for old or rare books, which are not only interesting in terms of content, but also whether they are valuable or for exhibition purposes, but the only consideration is how many copies are known on the book market.
The Times has arranged a new edition of the English Encyclopedia, the first fascicle of which was printed by some Scottish nobles in 1678 and published in Edinburgh by Colin Macfarghuar. The first edition ran in three volumes, containing two thousand six hundred and seventy pages, and the third volume appeared in 1771.
The "old booksellers" are becoming fewer and fewer in Budapest; the old big companies, which could still compete with the antiquarians of Leipzig, Munich, Frankfurt and Vienna, have either closed their shops or retreated to the narrow streets of the Inner City and Lipótváros, where they only sell sleepy books to the housekeepers, or old French grammars to the housekeepers' daughters who dream of going to the cinema. In fact, the first real antiquarian of the old Pest has now "sunk" so much that it only sells new books, which it receives on consignment from the publishers, and new works by novice writers and poets - at antiquarian prices.
Capital Newspapers, April 1891 (Volume 28, Nos. 89-118) Cousin's famous book collection was recently auctioned in Paris. A total of 136,192 francs were raised for the valuable books and rare manuscripts. However, the most expensive piece in the collection was...
Recently, the passion for book collecting has become very common in Italy, and with it, the Italian antiquarian book trade has also developed amazingly.
