38 2nd April 2011 antiquarian books The allure of early statistics
■ Landmark works continue to prove a sound investment
Ian McKay reports
A FAMOUS 18th century work on economics, Adam Smith’s ...Wealth of Nations, provides the starting point for a selection of works whose linking theme is the manner in which wealth is accumulated, maintained and managed, or even lost; how the economy of nations may be regulated, and how it may be measured and displayed to better effect. Recent sales show that, whatever the broader economic picture, this is an area of the book market that still has its boom moments.
Copies of the 1776, first edition of
Adam Smith’s ...Wealth of Nations make remarkably regular appearances in the salerooms, as I have observed before in these pages. A December 3 sale held by Christie’s New York offered not one, but two copies, which sold at $100,000 and $75,000 (£62,200 and £46,650), and
BUYER’S PREMIUMS
Bloomsbury Auctions, London: 22% to £250,000, 12% thereafter Bonhams, San Francisco: 22% to $100,000, then 20% to $500,000, and 12% thereafter Christie’s & Sotheby’s, London: 25% to £25,000, 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter Christie’s, New York: 25% to $50,000, 20% to $1m, 12% thereafter Heritage Auctions, Dallas: 19.5% John Nicholson, Fernhurst: 20% Swanns, New York: 20% Dominic Winter, Sth. Cerney: 17.5%
NB: premiums may not apply or have been set at different levels where prices from earlier sales are quoted.
Left: a clear and simple chart showing ‘Exports and Imports to and from Denmark and Norway from 1700 to 1800’ from Playfair’s Commercial and Political Atlas of 1785-86, sold for $35,000 (£22,400) at Christie’s New York.
Right: a plate from the 1805, first edition of Playfair’s An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations sold for £1650 by Dominic Winter.
Charts attentively, a sufficiently distinct impression will be made, to remain unimpaired for a considerable time, and the idea which does remain will be simple and complete, at once including the duration and amount”. The first edition copy in a period
on February 13 Bonhams San Francisco produced yet another. At $65,000 (£40,490), this was not
among the higher-priced copies we have seen – the record currently standing at £85,000 for a copy in an Edwards of Halifax binding sold at Christie’s in 2007 – but it was immediately preceded in the sale catalogue by a letter in Adam Smith’s hand that certainly did raise the bidding. Sent from Paris in 1766 to an
unnamed correspondent, it concerns the transport of his books and a picture of Henry Scott, Duke of Buccleuch, back home to Kirkcaldy in Scotland. Smith, who issues precise instructions as to the careful handing of the portrait, had been the young aristocrat’s tutor during their travels abroad in 1764-66, a trip during which Smith met Voltaire, Franklin, Quesney and other French economists. “I shall not know how to employ
myself until I get my library,” wrote Smith in a letter which made a treble-estimate $22,000 (£13,705). Letters with more direct reference to
his economic studies are, of course, likely to make much more, and in 2006, a letter on methods of increasing the national revenue made $90,000 (then £50,970) as part of the Forbes Collection at Christie’s New York. Published just a decade after the
first appearance of Adam Smith‘s great work, The Commercial and Political Atlas... of William Payfair is another ground-breaking work. With the aid of what were called “stained copper- plate charts”, it aimed to display the ...
. Not quite the whole century, in fact,
as the 44 charts of the first edition are dated 1785-86, but as such it became the first publication to contain statistical charts. Playfair (1759-1823) was a Scottish
engineer who had received his training in the Birmingham steam engine works of James Watt, but who also worked as a silversmith, accountant, merchant, investment broker and economist, and who in 1787 moved to Paris, where he is said to have taken part in the storming of the Bastille. A full life, certainly, but though it was
largely unacknowledged until after his death, it was his achievement in replacing the statistical tables previously used with graphic representations that was to be his lasting memorial. In the abovementioned atlas he introduced the line graph and bar chart of economic data and, in 1801, devised the pie chart and the circle graph. In his introduction to The Commercial
and Political Atlas..., Playfair explained: “The amount of mercantile transaction in money, and of profit or loss, are capable of being as easily represented in drawing, as any part of space, or as the face of a country...” and writes that while his charts “
...give a simple and distinct idea, they are as near perfect accuracy as is any way useful. On inspecting one of these
binding that made a record $35,000 (£22,400) at Christie’s New York on December 2 last was part of the ‘Beautiful Evidence’ library of Edward Tufte – a collection in which works demonstrating early approaches to information design played a key role and a sale which has contributed a number of lots to these pages over past months. The Tufte sale included several
other works by Playfair – in English and French – almost all of which, given the infrequent visits they make to the salerooms, will have sold for record prices. Among them were a 1798 first of his Lineal Arithmetic; applied to show the Progress of the Commerce and Revenue of England..., which sold at $6000 (£3840) and an 1807, second edition of An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations, at $3200 (£2050). Only a few weeks later, on January
26-27, Dominic Winter, sold an 1805 first of that latter work, untrimmed in period boards and complete with all four coloured charts, for £1650. On the subject of financial falls, my
files show that last October, Bloomsbury Auctions got a bid of £6000 on an 18pp vellum manuscript, handsomely bound in period black morocco gilt, containing a ‘Gen. Account of the Publick Debts discharg’d by the South Sea Company’. The manuscript includes several mentions of the company’s bankers, The Hollow Sword Blade Company, whose collapse in 1720 precipitated the run on the South Sea Company’s shares. Another very early item that has been
on hold for some time now is a pamphlet of 1697 that was offered at John Nicholson of Fernhurst last July. An anonymous Letter to a Friend concerning Credit, and how it may be restor’d to the
Left: the virtually mint copy of John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) sold for a record £8500 by Sotheby’s.
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