To: Homepage for and background on The Lucile Project;
To: The List of Lucile's Publishers with links to individual publisher's files.

In general (and with some notable exceptions, such as Hougton Mifflin), most of this group of publishers were "mass-market reprinters" -- that is, they reprinted "standard" works by British and American authors in large editions, generally priced their books inexpensively, and marketed to a very broad audience of potetential buyers. This was a high-volume, low-profit corner of the publishing industry, and many of the publishers were short-lived. They tend not to have attracted much contemporary attention -- indeed, to some degree they were despised as "pirates" by their more "respectable" colleagues. Few of their business records survive.

2. As is the case with many of the books you record, my book is not dated on the title page. Can you tell me when it was published?

First read carefully my head note about the publisher. I have often been able to establish the dates the firm entered and left business, and I have sometimes established the dates during which they were located at a specific address or the date on which they moved from one address to another. If these addresses appear on the title page of your book, that may help you narrow the possible date of publication for your book.

If the binding of your book matches one I have described (with different author and title stamps, of course) and I have transcribed dated information from PTLA (Publishers' Trade List Annual), then you can be pretty confident your book was another title in the series (or “Library” or “Edition”) described in PTLA and was published around the same time(s). Since these books were printed from electroplates that could be used again and again, individual copies in the same series that look identical may in fact have been printed a few years apart. But publishers tended to change binding designs frequently in order to give their editions new market appeal. It was unusual for any particular binding design to be used for more than a few years.

Since I have extracted PTLA information only for LUCILE, you might find further information about your title in its annual volumes. This is not easy work. See my essay on PTLA .

3. My book is not dated on the title page but does have a dated copyright notice on the verso (back) of the title page. Is this the date it was probably published?

Not necessarily. Because it was first published in England, LUCILE could not at any time be copyrighted in the United States, but new illustrations that a publisher provided could be. Consequently, some editions of reprinted titles carry a copyright notice on the verso of their title page; the notice does not say so, but it relates only to the illustrations.

However, these illustrations were themselves reprinted again and again and again. So a notice (e.g., "Copyright 1885") means that some or all of the illustrations in the book were first published in 1885; but the copy of the book you have in hand may well have been published three or five or fifteen years later.

4. I have a copy of one of the editions of LUCILE you illustrate (or another similar book by one of the publishers you list). Can you tell me its dollar value?

In general, I'm again sorry to say, I cannot. Relatively few editions of LUCILE (or similar books of this era) have substantial value, however. There are, for example, usually six to 15 copies of LUCILE being offered at any given time on eBay auctions (http://www.ebay.com; search "lucile" -- but avoid typing "lucille" (note the three "l"s) -- or you'll hit the hundreds of Lucille Ball items being offered); and dozens of copies are accumulating in eBay "stores." These auctions typically start between $2.00 and $10.00 and final bids rarely exceed $12.00 - $15.00. Many attract only a single bidder. Editions offered with starting prices above $20.00 usuallly attract no bidders and are offered again at lower starting prices.

You can also get some idea of the range of values of many books of this period by searching on-line databases like Bookfinder (http://www.bookfinder.com), Addall (http://www.addall.com/), abebooks (http://abebooks.com/), or the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of American (http://abaa.org/). The PBA Galleries "Instant Appraiser" may be useful (but can be pretty quirky for this kind of book).

Renember that value depends first on the condition of the item (only an authentic item in very fine condition is likely to be valuable) and second on the number of collectors who are or might be interested in it (the more collectors, the more active a market is likely to be). A good source of advice on the value of books is Your Old Books, published by the Rare Books & Manuscript Section of the American Library Association (http://www.rbms.info/yob.shtml).

If you can use a tax deduction, the Book Arts Press at the University of Virginia happily accepts copies of LUCILE in good condition. The Book Arts Press cannot appraise the value of your gift, but you can assign a value for tax purposes based on your research into the sale of similar copies.