a. and sb. (UN-1 7 b, 12.)

1

1565.  Cooper, Thesaurus, s.v. Merx, Vnsalehable ware.

2

1644.  Milton, Areop. (Arb.), 60. Sermons … vented in such numbers,… as have now wellnigh made all other books unsalable.

3

1692.  Ray, On Creation (ed. 2), Advt. By publishing a Second Edition of a Book, with large Additions, to render the former worthless and unsalable.

4

1762.  Sterne, Tr. Shandy, VI. xxxiii. An unsaleable piece of cambrick.

5

1798.  Hull Advertiser, 23 June, 4/4. Middling and ordinary qualities are quite unsaleable.

6

1817.  Coleridge, Biogr. Lit., I. 178. The unsaleable nature of my writings.

7

1860.  Ruskin, Unto this Last (1862), 112. A horse is useless, and therefore unsaleable, if no one can ride.

8

  sb.  1811.  Byron, Hints from Hor., 657. ‘Scott’s thirty thousand copies sold,’ which must sadly discomfit poor Southey’s unsaleables.

9

1843.  E. FitzGerald, Lett. (1889), I. 116. A desperate collection of pictures…: among them old unsaleables by Maclise.

10

  Hence Unsaleability; -ableness.

11

1872.  De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, 123. A climax of *unsaleability, unreadability, and inutility.

12

1775.  Ash, *Unsaleableness.

13

1903.  Saturday Rev., 10 Jan., 43/1. The unsaleableness of landscape.

14