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The Appraisal of Early Books: Problem and Paradox
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2019
Extract
Oscar Wilde's sally about Lord Darlington ‘a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing’ is very much the embodiment of the idea of what the valuation of rare books has come to mean today. Samuel Johnson defined the practitioner of this art, if one can call it that, a valuator, and defined him as ‘one who sets upon anything its price,’ a term for which he gives as synonym, appraiser. The term valuer is still used, and mostly pompously so, in the Anglo-Saxon auction world, its usage confirmed by the 19th century definition within the Act of Parliament 17 & 18 Victoria c.229 § 29 ‘to appoint a valuer to value the same.’ One can of course dismiss the subject as an etymological conceit, which in a sense it is, and say, what's in a name ? or conclude that ‘woord is but wynd.'
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- Copyright © 1996 by the International Association of Law Libraries
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