BOOKSELLING. The trade in books is of a very ancient date, the oldest reference to it occurring in Egyptian literature. The early poets and orators recited their effusions in public to in duce their hearers to possess written copies of their poems or orations. Frequently they were taken down viva voce, and tran scripts sold to such as were wealthy enough to purchase. A refer ence in the Talmud seems to show that not only the buying and selling, but also the lending of books was known to the Hebrews in their early history. In the book of Jeremiah the prophet is represented as dictating to Baruch the scribe, who, when ques tioned, described the mode in which his book was written. These scribes were, in fact, the earliest booksellers, and supplied copies as they were demanded. Aristotle, we are told, possessed a some what extensive library; and Plato is recorded to have paid the large sum of Too minae for three small treatises of Philolaus the Pythag orean. When the Alexandrian library was founded about 30o B.C., various expedients were resorted to for the purpose of procuring books, and this appears to have stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers, who were termed f cq3xtcav Keur77Xoc. In Rome, towards the end of the republic, it became the fashion to have a library as part of the household furniture ; and the book sellers, librarii (Cic. D. Leg. iii. 2o) or bibliopolae (Martial iv. 71, 3), carried on a flourishing trade. Their shops (taberna li brarii, Cic. Phil. ii. 9) were chiefly in the Argiletum, and in the Vicus Sandalarius. On the door, or on the side posts, was a list of the books on sale ; and Martial (i. '18), who mentions this also, says that a copy of his First Book of Epigrams might be purchased for five denarii. In the time of Augustus the great booksellers were the Sosii. According to Justinian (ii. 1. 33), a law was passed securing to the scribes the property in the materials used; and in this may, perhaps, be traced the first germ of the modern law of copyright.
The spread of Christianity naturally created a great demand for copies of the Gospels and other sacred books, and later on for missals and other devotional volumes for church and private use. Benedict Biscop, the founder of the abbey at Wearmouth in Eng land, brought home with him from France (671) a whole cargo of books, part of which he had "bought," but from whom is not mentioned. Among the Jews bookselling was well recognized in the middle ages. We read of one bookseller, Aaron, who carried He brew mss. into Italy from Toledo, and sold one considerable batch at Perugia. The travelling bookseller was a typical mediaeval fig ure. Previous to the Reformation, the text writers or stationers (stacyoneres), who sold copies of the books then in use--the A B C, the Paternoster, Creed, Ave Maria and other ms. copies of prayers, in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's, London—were, in 1403, formed into a gild. Some of these "stacyoneres" had stalls or stations built against the very walls of the cathedral itself, in the same manner as they are still to be found in some of the older Continental cities. In Henry Anstey's Munimenta Academica we catch a glimpse of the "sworn" university bookseller or stationer, John More of Oxford, who apparently first supplied pupils with their books, and then acted the part of a pawnbroker. Besides the sworn stationers there were many booksellers in Oxford who were not sworn; for one of the statutes, passed in the year 1373, ex pressly recites that, in consequence of their presence, "books of great value are sold and carried away from Oxford, the owners of them are cheated, and the sworn stationers are deprived of their lawful business." It was, therefore, enacted that no bookseller ex cept two sworn stationers or their deputies, should sell any book exceeding half a mark in value, under pain of imprisonment, or, if the offence was repeated, of abjuring his trade within the university.
"The trade in bookselling seems," says Hallam, "to have been established at Paris and Bologna in the i2th century; the lawyers and universities called it into life. It is very improbable that it existed in what we properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois men tions a book which he had bought of a public dealer, but we do not find many distinct accounts of them till the next age. These deal ers were denominated stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls at which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word for a shop in low Latin. They appear, by the old statutes of the University of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon commission, and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from the librarii, a word which, having originally been confined to the copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them.