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Bv ALEX PHILIPPIDIS
Rappahannock Ncwa Staff Writer
What do you do with books that are 300 or 400 years old?
John B. Crane of Washington knows. A collector of rare books, Crane recently shipped six of his oldest volumes to New York, where a dealer will appraise them.
“I’ll see what they’ll pay me for them,” he said.
While he said some of his books could be “very valuable,” he added that for old books, “rarity doesn’t necessarily mean they are exceedingly valuable.
It depends on whether people want them.”
What were some of the volumes Crane shipped? The oldest was a collection in Latin of works by the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes, an edition printed in 1549, only 113 years after Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press.
The other books include a collection in Latin of works by the Roman orator Cicero, printed in 1590; a 1662 volume detailing a peace treaty between German baronies and the state of Rome; and a 1796 defense of usury from British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Its appendix contains a letter from Adam Smith—the father of freeenterprise economics.
Two other books round out the set. The first, Georgii Agricolae, is a 1561 guide to apiculture and metallurgy. Written in Latin, the volume contains text and detailed illustrations of farm machines, planting techniques and metal-forging devices.
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