How interesting. Normally, I wouldn't expect to pay $2500 for a 19th century book of letters, but with a very rare book, it all comes down to who wants it and how much they are willing to pay. It is very niche, so I expect it will stick around awhile before it finds the right buyer.
I ran a library search to get a deeper idea of the rarity. I found 2 copies in libraries that look like they could be this first edition (and I'm iffy about one of them because there wasn't a ton of information readily available). The 2nd and 3rd editions turned up noticeably more results ($1400 for the 2nd edition is probably optimistic), so I'm thinking the 1st edition was a small print run that proved popular enough to justify larger print runs within a fairly short period of time.
