I have a copy of Arnold Bennett’s The Stepmother. Paperback.In original hand-stencilled dust jacket. Dated 1910. First edition Excellent condition, small tear on spine. Anyone know if it’s worth anything?
Old books are a strange market - like many other collectibles, the value varies widely depending upon who is looking for the book at any given time.
Most of Bennett’s plays sell for about $12 to $18 US in older editions like yours. On the other hand, *The Stepmother * is relatively uncommon, and may fetch more. Condition and other features are important as well - having the dust jacket is important; so is the condition of the spine, whether the corners are bumped, the presence and extent of foxing (those little brown spots that appear on old paper), whether the paper is tanned or brittle from age, whether it’s been signed by the author, etc. For example, a standard first-edition copy of Bennett’s Judith sells for about $15, while a specially-printed copy signed by him might fetch over $100. Many people may be surprised to find that a previous owner’s name or inscription inked on the endpapers or flyleaves hardly ever affects the value at all.
How much you can actually get for your book is anyone’s guess. You could throw it on eBay and it might go for £100, or it might go begging at £5. Your best bet is probably to visit a local used bookseller, let them look over the book and check the condition, and ask them.
I’m gonna let this one stand because it’s a trifle weird (a 1910 paperback, wow)… however, in general, we don’t want these boards to become an auction house. So, responses should be limited to telling Iceland_Blue where to look, how to find out, etc. … No offers to buy permitted!
So is a “bob” the same thing as a Pound, or is it the same as a “crown” (which is half a Pound, or at least was half a Pound back in the days of the Shilling)?
No, a bob is a slang term for a shilling.
There appears to be a copy for sale on Bibliofind.
So does that mean there’s no such thing as a bob any more, now that Britain has switched over to decimal currency?
Well, officially there never was a unit of currency called the “bob.”
However, a shilling is still 1/20th of a pound, or 5p in the new money. For several years after decimalisation we still had shilling or two-shilling coins circulating. These days, with 5p being such a trivial sum of money, it has become very rare to talk about shillings or bobs, except for rhetorical effect, as in the OP.
That’s a combined three-plays-in-one edition, and it’s dated 1899 not 1910. That’s not what the OP described.
However, since it appears to mean that the 1910 edition is not a true first edition, the worth of the OP’s copy has just gone way down unless it happens to be a specialist collectible.
And Dex, plays are often issued in softcovers instead of hardcovers because they’re easier to handle on stage while learning lines.
Just FWIW, I don’t recommend using Bibliofind, which is not the same since it was purchased by Amazon. BookFinder.com searches far more book sites and returns more and usually cheaper hits.
In this case, admittedly, searching on The Stepmother returns the same copy from the same dealer. But searching for the omnibus title, Polite Farces, for the Drawing-Room, returns a whole range of editions, reprints, and pricing that are not on Amazon.