Life of Wellington by C. H. Gifford

I thought I'd look up the value of a little two volume set I
bought years ago on Abe books, but Abe let me down. I couldn't
find this work listed. Can anyone help me out here?

The work is titled
"The Life of the Most Noble Arthur, Duke of Wellington; from his
earliest years, down to the Treaty of Paris in 1815, comprising
particular details of the great battles of Vimiera, Talavera,
Salamanca, Vittoria, and the Pyrenees; An Historical View of the
Origin, Progress, and Termination of the Peninsular War. Together
with a Circumstantial Narrative of the Splendid Victory over
Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo; Interspersed with
Biographical Sketches of the Most Distinguished Military Officers
that have served under his Grace, etc."

In two volumes. London, printed by W. Lewis, St. John's Square
Vol I, 1816; Vol II, 1817.

Et cetera indeed! They weren't stingy with the book titles in them
there days, were they now?

I found a book with the same general title on Abe -- that is to
say "Life of the Most Noble Arthur, Duke of Wellington" -- and it
was published in 1816, but it has a different subtitle and its
author is George Elliott. It appears to be one volume, not two.

Anybody know what my set is worth? It's full leather, very tiny (2
7/8 inches by 5 inches), with nice plates at the start of each
volume. One of the owners signed his name (H. A. Prat, 1839 -- I
wish I could shove his pen up his nose) on a blank leaf at the
start of each volume, but the title pages and text pages, and
plates, were not marked. There is some browning on the pages. They
are not brittle, though. Overall the books are in pretty fair
shape. Some scuffing on the edges, slightly rounded corners.

Firstly, just to confirm the bibliographical details, here is the COPAC
listing for the work you are describing:
_______________________________________
Main Author: Gifford, C. H.
Title Details: The life of the most noble Arthur, Duke of Wellington :
from his earliest years, down to the Treaty of Paris in 1815:
comprising particular details of the great battles of Vimiera,
Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and the Pyrenees; an historical view of
the origin, progress, and termination of the Peninsula War. Together
with a circumstancial narrative of the splendid victory over Napoleon
Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo; interspersed with biographical
sketches of the most distinguished military officers that have served
under his Grace, &c
Publisher: London : Printed and published by W. Lewis, ... and sold by
all bookseller., 1817
Physical desc.: 2v, xi, [1], 348; viii, 375, [1] p., [8], [9] leaves of
plates : ill., ports ; 14 cm
Note: Added t.p. in v. 1 has imprint: London. Printed for W. Lewis &
Co, April 15: 1816; v. 2: London. Printed for W. Lewis & Co. ... Jany.
25. 1817
Each vol. has added engraved t.p.: The life of the most noble Arthur
Duke of Wellington, by C.H. Gifford ... In two volumes
Plates are dated 1816
Subject: Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 1769-1852
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Anglo-French War, 1793-1802
Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815
Other Names: Lewis, William
(http://copac.ac.uk/wzgw?id=2882852&f=u&esn=F&rsn=1&rn=2)
_______________________________________

Does your set conform in all details with this one?

Assuming it does, then, you are right there is no copy on ABE, nor on
Alibris. It's listed on Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/9mqyz), but it must
have sold; there's no price and it's marked unavailable.

You could conduct the various searches of online catalogues at
http://www.trussel.com/f_books.htm, and you might turn up something.

Perhaps, though, you will not be able to track it down. Even if you
did, the result would be a dealer's asking price, not a price that
anyone has actually paid. The next step would be to take a look through
auction catalogues. These are better, since the prices are actually
prices that someone has paid, rather than asking prices, but it can
take a long and exhausting hunt to track down a particular title,
especially an obscure one.

In the absence of any other guide, you could use the prices on the
George Elliott volume as a benchmark; your set was published at roughly
the same time, and appears to be of roughly comparable length. The
plates may give it an edge on the other volume (which has a map, but no
plates), but it's likely to be in the same ballpark.

In which case, if you want the value for insurance purposes, you could
insure it for around the same price, and if you want the value in order
to sell it you could perhaps put it on eBay with a reserve/starting
price of perhaps half to two-thirds of the Elliott copy and see what
happens.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

Firstly, just to confirm the bibliographical details, here is the COPAC
listing for the work you are describing:
_______________________________________
Main Author: Gifford, C. H.
Title Details: The life of the most noble Arthur, Duke of Wellington :
from his earliest years, down to the Treaty of Paris in 1815:
comprising particular details of the great battles of Vimiera,
Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and the Pyrenees; an historical view of
the origin, progress, and termination of the Peninsula War. Together
with a circumstancial narrative of the splendid victory over Napoleon
Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo; interspersed with biographical
sketches of the most distinguished military officers that have served
under his Grace, &c
Publisher: London : Printed and published by W. Lewis, ... and sold by
all bookseller., 1817
Physical desc.: 2v, xi, [1], 348; viii, 375, [1] p., [8], [9] leaves of
plates : ill., ports ; 14 cm
Note: Added t.p. in v. 1 has imprint: London. Printed for W. Lewis &
Co, April 15: 1816; v. 2: London. Printed for W. Lewis & Co. ... Jany.
25. 1817
Each vol. has added engraved t.p.: The life of the most noble Arthur
Duke of Wellington, by C.H. Gifford ... In two volumes
Plates are dated 1816
Subject: Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 1769-1852
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Anglo-French War, 1793-1802
Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815
Other Names: Lewis, William
(http://copac.ac.uk/wzgw?id=2882852&f=u&esn=F&rsn=1&rn=2)
_______________________________________

Does your set conform in all details with this one?

Assuming it does, then, you are right there is no copy on ABE, nor on
Alibris. It's listed on Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/9mqyz), but it must
have sold; there's no price and it's marked unavailable.

You could conduct the various searches of online catalogues at
http://www.trussel.com/f_books.htm, and you might turn up something.

Perhaps, though, you will not be able to track it down. Even if you
did, the result would be a dealer's asking price, not a price that
anyone has actually paid. The next step would be to take a look through
auction catalogues. These are better, since the prices are actually
prices that someone has paid, rather than asking prices, but it can
take a long and exhausting hunt to track down a particular title,
especially an obscure one.

In the absence of any other guide, you could use the prices on the
George Elliott volume as a benchmark; your set was published at roughly
the same time, and appears to be of roughly comparable length. The
plates may give it an edge on the other volume (which has a map, but no
plates), but it's likely to be in the same ballpark.

In which case, if you want the value for insurance purposes, you could
insure it for around the same price, and if you want the value in order
to sell it you could perhaps put it on eBay with a reserve/starting
price of perhaps half to two-thirds of the Elliott copy and see what
happens.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

Yes, thanks John, that looks like the set of books I've got. I
suspect its value might be slightly higher than the George Elliott
work, because mine is in two volumes, printed in two different
years. The old bookseller who sold me the set was of the opinion
that this raised their rarity, because it was uncommon to find
together both volumes of a set of books published in different
years. This seemed reasonable to me, since I run across numerous
broken sets of various early 19th century works in my book
browsing. I noticed that the high asking price on the Elliott work
was $400 US in the ABE Books search I did.

Al Smith wrote:

I suspect its value might be slightly higher than the George
Elliott work, because mine is in two volumes, printed in two
different years. The old bookseller who sold me the set was
of the opinion that this raised their rarity, because it was
uncommon to find together both volumes of a set of books
published in different years.

Yes, that's true enough. You should probably value your set at least
highly as the Elliott, and perhaps rather higher.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com