Okay, I have this book that I bought on ebay years ago. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to find information on line as to scarcity or value. The following information applies:
Title: The Royal Jubilee History of England, from the earliest times to AD 1879
By: Tyttler and Sherer, with a narrative supplement to 1886 and a review of the reign of Queen Victoria by A. Duffy
Published by: John G. Murdoch & Co., Ltd, London and Melbourne, 1887
Hardbound, about 8x10, heavy relief on cover, which has five illustrations of famous personages in gold; beautiful engravings by J. Rogers of historical events throughout
Is anybody familiar with this particular volume, or do you know a site that I can check on?
I’ve checked with a lot of antique bookstores in the UK, but none list this book. Maybe I can email some of them. I don’t think Powell’s would be much help with this, as it seems to be obscure for such a large volume. It’s also in fairly bad shape, so they would likely lowball it. It’s just weird that I can’t find any reference to it online.
Hi Chefguy - I think you know from guitar threads that I collected books for years and have recently been “converting” them - flipping them to use the proceeds on cool, old guitars.
Having said that, I input the book’s info and came up empty. Rats! You might do a search online for rare book dealers specializing in British History and try pinging them via their info@ email addresses…
Thanks for checking in. As mentioned above, I sent a couple of emails last night to dealers in the UK, so I’m curious to see what they have to say. It’s just odd to me that in the vast annals of the intertoobs, this book doesn’t seem to generate positive hits.
Wordman: I just played with your search engine a bit and came up with a hit that may be an earlier edition of the book (same publisher, although the coauthor name is not a match). It appears that it may have been a two-volume set, which would mean that my copy is probably worthless.
Just heard back from one of the UK sellers. He went to the union catalog of British libraries, expecting to find multiple listings, and found. . .none. I’ve sent him photos of the front pages, in case I missed something. This really is an odd duck.
Both the name of the book and the name of one of the authors in OP are incorrect. The authors are Henry Tyrrell, John Sherer, and William C. Stafford. Perhaps Stafford became a co-author in later editions of the book. Perhaps the title of the book changed also:
Sorry, but you are incorrect. The names and the title are exactly as described and as printed in the first pages of the book. While the edition in that year was authored by those folks, this edition is not (unless there was a massive printing error that included getting two of the three authors and the title wrong).
Essentially the same book appears to have been published repeatedly with minor changes from 1876 or thereabouts to (at least) 1887, by at least two different publishers. Most editions seem to be issued by James G. Murdoch, but the National Library of Australia has an entry for an 1876 edition by McGready, Thompson and Niven.
What the OP has seems to be be a souvenir edition prepared for sale in connection with the golden jubilee of the accession of Queen Victoria, with the word “jubilee” stuck into the title in an attempt to cash in on the occasion. If the author’s name is given as “Tyttler” that might add to the value, since it looks like an error; every other edition that I can find by googling names him as Tyrrell, and the same Tyrrell seems to have authored other popular histories (“A History of the Present War with Russia”, “A History of England for the Young”) despite being invariably by-lined as a “Teacher of Elocution”.
I’m sorry about this, but I really think that the title page got the author’s name wrong. There are various other references to Henry Tyrrell, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone named Tyttler mentioned anywhere else. I don’t understand how the publisher could have messed up anything as basic as the author’s name, but that’s apparently what happened. The title of the book might have changed in various editions. The third author Stafford might have been written new stuff for later editions.
This seems like a reasonable explanation. I would think there would be more examples of the book out there, but so far: nothing.
I had noticed before that the name ‘Tyrrell’ seems to be all over other versions of this book. How a printer could get it so completely wrong is a mystery, unless the typesetter was drunk that day.
Wendell Wagner: Your previous comment led me to believe that you thought I was incapable of correctly copying the information from the book. I see now that that wasn’t the case.
I can also see how someone working for the publisher could get from ‘Tyrrell’ to ‘Tyttler’, oddly enough, but it doesn’t explain the “A. Duffy” as the third writer in place of Stafford.
So now I seem to have a very large old volume that nobody can identify thus far, other than it possibly being a variation on a previous work, and that perhaps was rushed to print, which would perhaps explain the problems with the front pages. I don’t know how things worked in the legal system back then pertaining to the written word, but I’m now wondering if Mr. Tyrrell demanded that the volume be withdrawn from the market, since he was not properly credited. Perhaps this caused the publisher to lose money on the volume and he elected not to republish the entire work. This could explain why there are so few of these around and why it’s not listed anywhere.
As for it being valuable: I seriously doubt it. More of a curiosity, really.
The antique book dealer in London who responded to me has basically thrown up his hands, and responded with:
“So far the book remains a bit of a mystery. There were of course a host of publications to celebrate the Jubilee, some more grandiose than others, and none, in the end, very important. So this seems to me to be typical of the genre, at the grandiose end, very expensive when published, but of no appreciable commercial value today.”
Not sure about the last bit. I’ve seen the earlier versions online for 300 pounds, and there are always collectors looking for misprints and errors. Maybe I’ll put it back on ebay and see if there are any nibbles.
I would suggest saying as much as possible on ebay about the various names and authors for the different editions of this book, since someone might be looking on ebay for another edition but would be interested in this edition.