BURNS FIRST EDITION

Evening Star, Issue 22445, 16 September 1936, Page 10

BURNS FIRST EDITION

Will the romance associated with the survivors of that first Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns’s poems ever cease? At Hodgson’s rooms a copy, which had been picked up “ for the price of a mere song ” at a sale near the Crystal Palace, realised £47o—the hid of Mr Gabriel Wells, of New York (writes A. C. R. Carter, in the London ‘ Daily Telegraph ’). One would think that, by now, most people would bo aware of the value of such a prize—whatever its condition. Records of high prices have been continually published during the past 20 years, culminating in the huge sum of £2,450 paid for the Mann copy in July, 1929. As far back as 1903 the trustees of the Burns Cottage Memorial Museum gladly gave £I,OOO for the famous, and perfect, Veith survivor which had been bought for £lO at Paisley. Tn the dark ages other copies used to be in Glasgow “ twopenny boxes.” Burns was on the point of quitting Scotland for ever (for Jamaica) when the success of the Kilmarnock edition caused him to change his mind. _ But what was that •“ success ” financially? We know that the wily Wilson, his publisher, issued 612 copies at 3s each. He charged £4l 16s for “ cost of paper, printing, etc.” Then he “ divided ” the profit—£3o for himself, £2O for the poet. Yet the blind Milton received only two instalments of £5 apiece for his immortal ‘ Paradise Lost.’ But when the manuscript revise of this (dictated to his amannensisi was offered at Sotheby’s in March, 1904, it was bought at £">.000 for the Pierpont Morgan library.