Harry Heathcote of Gangoil

Hi
I have a very old copy of this book by Anthony Trollope ( 1874) it was my great grandmothers and has been left to me. I was wondering if it was of any value and if I could maybe sell it
Thanks any help would be appreciated

 

any photo's.........
no way to tell the condition just from your description..

 

Yes I have some photos
Thank you for taking the time to reply

 

@2manybooks ....may have an idea...

 

Ok thanks for your help

 

Welcome to Antiquers, @Fran Skelhorn . I have a question and a comment, although this needs more investigation.

The question: Is the text of this book in German? I ask because there is a German publisher listed on the title page and it says "The Right of Translation is Reserved." The first edition of this book was published in English by Samson Low in 1874, the same year on the title page of yours.

Now the comment -- I'm not sure how to make sense of what is written at the bottom of the spine of the book. It appears to say "C. Kirsinger & Co. / Valparaiso." According to an excellent site for information about postcards, they were "Important publishers of view-cards depicting scenes in Chile. They were printed in black & white and tinted collotypes with an extra blue plate. This firm also had branches in Valparaiso and Concepcion." http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersk.html

So the Valparaiso mentioned on the spine is the one in Chile. I'm trying to figure out why this would have one German publisher on the title page and a publisher from Chile on the spine. Do you have any information that could help with that?

I found this copy of the Tauchnitz / Leipzig edition for sale via abebooks: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Bo...centlyadded=all&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

Please note that this is an asking price. Nobody has bought the book at that price. Also, it appears to have a completely different cover than yours does.

I hope somebody can help with better information!

 

why this would have one German publisher

before and AFTER the war........lots of German families in Chile.

 

I will tag @2manycats - this one is out of my league.

 

Hm, unusual. Tauchnitz were German popular publishers and important copyright reformers - among other things, they published editions authorized by English authors in English, but in countries other than England. Their books were the forerunners of modern popular paperbacks. A quick googling reveals that Kirsinger was a notable Chilean bookseller & music publisher back in the day. My guess is that Kirsinger bought unbound sheets from Tauchnitz - the shipping would have been cheaper - and had them bound locally, putting their own name on the binding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tauchnitz_publishers
http://festivalpo.blogspot.com/2006/07/kirsinger-cia-in-valpo.html

Here's a similar item on Abebooks, so clearly this is a thing they did:
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Se...z kirsinger&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t

As for value, in this condition, it's a curiousity, not a collectible. I note three copies in different bindings on Abe, which means it's likely the book was bound in wraps - like a modern paperback, but flimsier - consistent with their methods, and allowing the ultimate buyer to have them bound to taste. The price doesn't seem out of line, but repairing this copy would easily exceed $100.

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Se...&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=gangoil

 

Thank you everyone for your help with the curiosity of my book. The text is in English which makes it a bit more intriguing but I will carry on researching and if anyone has anymore information about it I would love to hear from you.
Thanks again it's a brilliant forum !!!!!

 

JMHO.
Valparaiso was a free port, so no direct taxes. big German community of merchants. most probably no copyright legislation in Chile at the time.
Tauchnitz also printed religious stuff in German including bibles which had a certain importance in a Catholic neighbourhood.
Germans like to make business with Germans.
those books in English were most probably a courtesy for the English community.
a nice curio but not more.

 

Sounds like a good guess to me!

 

why ? I'm rather sure that there were no import taxes on books in those years. and Tauchnitz was one of the rare editors that paid the authors voluntarily some royalties he wasn't liable.
the only problem would have been if he delivered books in English to English colonies.

 

The reason I think it makes sense was that it provides an explanation as to why the Tauchnitz name is on the title page, yet the Kirsinger name is on the spine of the cover. Your explanations are also very good and informative.

 

Nothing to do with taxes. Unbound books are thinner and lighter. You could fit perhaps half again as many unbound sheets in a given size crate as bound books, depending on the thickness of the text-block, so it would be much cheaper, per book, to ship unbound books.

 

complete nonsense. in these years books printed in and bound in Germany were so cheap compared to ones made in other countries that this is no point at all.

 

Surely making a few pfennige each on 300 books is more profitable than making the same profit on each of 200 books? And obviously this Chilean firm thought so, unless you think they paid Tauchnitz to have them hardbound - not Tauchnitz's usual practice - and then shipped them to Valparaiso?

 

Tauchnitz is not the problem. London was the problem with their meanness to block off all import of printed material in English in their Empire and trying to impose their legislations everywhere ? a bit of pressure to Chili perhaps ? furthermore Valparaiso had certainly bigger problems with all the natural catastrophes it went through than to look after a binding house for a few English readers. do you really think it made a big difference in the overall price from Europe around the Magellan Straits up to Valparaiso ?
when Kirsinger wrote to Tauchnitz and ordered these books then he wrote in German.
and what should the idea be of Tauchnitz not doing hardbounds ? that was the standard then, especially as did Bibles as well.

 

The Continental practice, as opposed to American & English, was generally to issue books in paper wrappers, similar to but flimsier than modern paperbacks - many French publishers did this well into the 20th century. The buyer, sometimes a bookseller but usually a wealthy collector, would have their books bound in a uniform style. I have little experience of South American publishing, but the few things I have seen from the nineteenth century would indicate conformation to the Continental pattern.

"The basic Tauchnitz editions were issued in paperback, but it was the practice for most of the 19th century for buyers to take them to their own bookbinder to have them bound. "

https://tauchnitzeditions.webs.com/index.htm#627158124

 

nice. it's all about the English editions they've done.
so you really believe that they'd have survived in Germany - or on the continent - as a company that sold cheaply-made pocket editions in English ? till 1945 most Europeans including the educated upper classes were not interested in English as a language at all. for culture it was French, Latin or to some extent Italian; for technical books and teaching materials in great parts of the East it was and still is German. when working in the then still existing Cechoslovakia in the 1990s I was amazed that practically all engineers still spoke fluently German because places like Leipzig not only printed a big part of the manuals but also offered technical schooling.