Taste sets the price: Meade, Askew, and the birth of bibliomania in eighteenth-century England.

Three of the most important libraries sold during the first 100 years of English book auctions belonged to doctors. By examining the contents of these sales and the prices achieved in them, I hope to be able to throw some light on the extent and expertise of English book collecting by physicians to discover the principles that governed book values through this period, and to illustrate how three prominent medical men's libraries fitted into the century's wider cultural development.