Poetry is, perhaps, the form of literature most affected by the craze for modern first editions, especially considering the small original cost of the books, for before the. war most of them were published at half-a-crown, a shilling, six-pence, or even less. Now almost any decent book of verse issued: in the years immediately preceding the war, and many a volume of still more recent date, is worth two or three or 10 or 20 or 30 times its original price. Rupert Brooke's ''Poems" (1911) is sold to-day for six guineas, and his "1914" for two or three, and in America the current prices of these books are $35 and $10! respectively; some copies of the 1911 volume, even, changed hands for as much as $75 about a year ago, but I believe that this price has not been maintained. A_set of the four issues of "New Numbers," which Brooke, Lascelles Abercrombie, W. W. Gibson, and 3. Drinkwater published from Gloucestershire in 1914 ig worth £5 5s, H. Davies's first book, "The Soul's Destroyer," privately circulated by him from The Farmhouse, Marshalsea Road, §.E. (an odd sort of address, as one would not imagine there was a farmhouse in that part of the world), cost originally half-a-crown. I have recently seen it listed at prices varying from five guineas to £8 10s., though most of his later books are only worth a few shillings each.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.