Bookride

House Calls

2008-05-12T08:21:00.004Z

Someone wrote asking me to spill the beans on house calls. Sometimes known as 'call outs' or 'book calls' they occur when a second hand bookseller is invited to offer for a collection of books at someone's house. Sometimes it is a warehouse, garage, locker or even office but generally a goodish quantity of books is involved and one has usually found out on the phone beforehand whether it is worth going. Even then it is often not and one is back on the street in five minutes flat. However occasionally wonderful, exciting and rare books can be found - and in the most unexpected places.

It is a general rule that the wealthier the family selling the better books the books will be--which is why school teachers hardly ever have good libraries. Good books were always expensive. A 7/6 novel bought in the 1920s was equivalent to an outlay now of about £30 (and it is always good to see 7/6 on the jacket of a 1920s Bodley Head Christie.) However we once bought a marvellous collection of rare and collectable pre war books in fabulous condition from the estate of a fireman in Surbiton- an unpromising area. I recall he had a fine/ fine 'Road to Oxiana' and hundreds of similar books and even a few three deckers.

It is usually preferable to be buying from a deceased estate, living collectors tend to hold on to the good stuff or want too much for it- one of the sad facts of book life. One morose old Chelsea dealer was known for saying of house calls 'I like to hear of a death.' Someone once categorised the 5 reasons for selling books thus (the 5 D's) Death, Divorce, Debt, Disinterest and Displacement. The last refers to people moving houses, a very common reason. One could add 'Disease'- I was onced called to a house in Battersea where a man was selling every single book he possessed because he had become allergic to the paper in them. Marriage can occasion the turfing out of a lot of books, especially when two great collections are amalgamated. We were privileged to be called to the Notting Hill mansion of Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd at one point. Divorce as a reason is comparatively rare and a dodgy area, there have been occasions where one partner in a fit of rage has sold the others collection without permission and the books have to be taken back and lawyers start writing you letters...to be continued with anecdotes, advice and sundry indiscretions

Billy Childish. The First Creatcher is Jellosey, 1981.

2008-05-07T08:40:00.001Z

Billy Childish. THE FIRST CREATCHER IS JELLOSEY. Phyroid Press, Chatham, 1981.

Current Selling Prices
$400-$900 /£200-£450

POETRY / ART/ POST PUNK
Billy Childish's books, the valuable early ones, mostly look like fanzines - cheaply home printed, stapled with b/w photos and drawings-- some of Childish and his erstwhile consort Tracey Emin. Tracey has gone on to make Rolls Royce money, Billy is still madly productive but more of a cult than a celebrity. However his books are very saleable with a fanbase all over the globe (inc China) and his works sell with alacrity unless you put 'stopper' prices on them. One used to find them in the collections of fellow poets and artists and Childish mailed a certain amout out to critics etc., We got a box full from the collection of the late Jeff Nuttall when he was moving house. All have now sold. The only thing I have left is a broadsheet blutaked to the wall of a room full of book boxes at our warehouse--it lists 24 books of the Phyroid Press 1978 - 1982 with the above title (spelled here as Jellosy) the penultimate. It also lays down some ground rules when dealing with the esteemed publishing house:-

'1. Do not swager yu bollocks when you come in
and dont give us any arty shit
yu will resive a brocken jaw and apendiges pretty qwick
2. If yu bottle out n turn out to be a whimpy one
we will not give you respect
infact we will do you down.
3. Do not talk of CND feminism or any of
that crap or we will bust yu lip

We talk the strong langwige that only children can bear
we drink neat carosean n smoke full strength navi-cut
our noses are smokeing chimny stacks
they fall over and crush yu wife and kids

We feed on boil pork n black cocain...'

This was obviously not Sidgwick and Jackson but Childish (with his cohort Sexton Ming) produced a good body of work from their Chatham / Gravesend residences that is now seriously collected to be continued

Antonio Lopez Garcia...Rare Rizzoli Art Book.

2008-04-29T19:16:00.000Z

Michael Brenson & Francisco Calvo Serraller, Edward J. Sullivan. ANTONIO LOPEZ GARCIA.Rizzoli, NY 1990.

Current Prices
$1400-$2000 / £700-£1000 ISBN: 0847812499.

ART
Antonio López García, born 1936. Painter, sculptor, photorealist.'Post surreal apparition paintings' - highly regarded but not prolific artist much admired by difficult to please Aussie art bloke Robert Hughes. A seriously sought after art book, no copies on web and presumably every copy that comes up sells, some possibly at effoff prices. Who knows its real value, your guess is as good as mine etc., possibly that of a roadworthy used car, can't speculate much more than that. Sizeable art book. Rizzoli don't do flimsy.

VALUE? Rizzoli also published another unfindable book on the artist in 1986. Also of some significant value. Weberbooks.com speculate a value for Brenson's book of $177.50 and note there are 8 buyers waiting at Amazon, the most I have ever heard of. As Manuel might say 'I know nothing...' but suspect this might be worth quite a lot more. The only caveat is that all the wants could come from the same guy or the same petit coterie. It happens. One man or a couple can go round everywhere and ask for a book time and time again and eventually dealers get the false idea that the book is seriously wanted. It's called the Pat and Gerry factor. That's another story and I'll tell it one day...

STOP PRESS. Above was written in January 2007. This is a book that can now be found albeit at a price. There are now 3 copies on the web at $1750- $2100. Apparently the book is massive in size ( 13.5 x 12.5 x 1.5 inches) almost a doorstop.One dealer quotes from the d/w blurb-- "...forerunner of the realist movement centered in Madrid, Antonio Lopez Garcia"s work is among the most personal and intense to have appeared in post-war Spain. This book is the first to present all of his known work, and offers the most complete examination of his achievement to date..." I am not sure how long these copies have been there but I suspect that the book would sell fairly readily at $1300 and that $2000 is the 'stopper' price.

Pat and Gerry? They were a couple of collectors/ runners/ flaneurs who hunted down books and occasionally ran them. The writer/ dealer Iain Sinclair wrote about them and befriended them. At one point they decided to find all the books of Maclaren Ross, the Fitrovian writer. The fearless duo asked for his books in every shop in London and the outskirts. At the time they were the only known punters for his work (about 1980). After a while they found they couldn't buy his books because they had created what appeared to be a demand for his works. In fact by the late 1980s there was a considerable collecting cult around him, so Pat and Gerry were as ever ahead of their time. The same thing happened with the novelist John Lodwick and the poet ASJ Tessimond, except that in their cases the demand did not significantly materialise or spread. Below is a photo of the cover of this much wanted art book.

Kay Nielsen. East of the Sun and West of the Moon, 1914.

2008-04-27T08:50:00.002Z

Kay Nielsen. EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON. Old Tales from the North. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1914.

Current Selling Prices
$2500-$20000 /£1200-£10000

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
One of the great works from what is now known as 'the golden age of book illustration.' This was from about 1905 to 1930. It is sometimes said that the rising costs of producing these elaborate illustrated books finished them off, certainly by the 1930s there was less money about and these books were always expensive. They started to become expensive again in the 1960s and by the 1970s they were seriously collected. Ancient auction records reveal the venerable Charing Cross bookseller Joseph's paying £4 for a copy of the signed limited edition (500 numbered copies) in October 1950. By 1960 they were paying about £6 - but in 1974 we see them paying £85 for a copy of the ordinary edition. By that time the great promoters of these standard Illustrated books were the fabulous Harrington brothers then selling out of an antique arcade on the King's Road. All early auction results show Joseph's as almost the only buyers of Nielsen (and all the other "Golden Age' illustrators.) Joseph's expert David Brass eventually segued to Heritage in Los Angeles which, for a time, became the epicentre of illustrated book collecting.

In the early 1970s I was selling books from a barrow on the Portobello Road and every other punter wanted 'Dulac, Rackham, Nielsen' possibly in the mistaken idea we had never heard of them and would knock them out for a fiver each. Also in the great canon of desired illustrators was Heath Robinson, Charles Robinson, the Detmolds, Jessie M King (my favourite) Willy Pogany, Harry Clarke and bringing up the rear Rene Bull, Warwick Goble and dog man Cecil Aldin. They also wanted 'The Ship that Sailed to Mars' by William Timlin and, from an earlier age, Beardsley and Beerbohm.

Kay Nielsen 1886 - 1957 (his name is pronounced Kye as in Rye) was a Danish born artist who studied art in Paris. His artistic influences must include John Bauer, the great Swedish fairy tale artist. Echoes of his forests and trees lurk in the backgrounds of many of Nielsen's paintings. He was also a follower of Art Nouveau and The Birmingham School, as exemplified by Jessie M. King. Other inputs include Hiroshige and Beardsley. Houfe in his magisterial 'Dictionary of British Book Illustrators' adds:

'...he was a brilliant colourist and a highly decorative illustrator, his works formed into frieze-like patterns, are closest to Middle Eastern designs and therefore akin to Leon Bakst or Edmund Dulac. He uses stippling effects and elaborate rococo motifs which are reminiscent of Beardsley, but also the swirling lines of Vernon Hill and the more sculptural lines of incipient art deco...'

Good to see Vernon Hill mentioned - his astonishing work is hardly known today. Houfe lists many 100s of interesting illustrators but the majority of collectors are only interested in about a dozen bankable names. Other collectable illustrators include this random Britcentric selection-- Austin Spare, Frank Pape, Beresford Egan, Horton, Alasdair, Bosschere, Jack B Yeats, Rex Whistler, Marie Laurencin, Frans Masereel, W.T. Horton, William Strang, Robert Gibbings, Balthus, Edward Wadsworth, William Nicholson, Edward Burra, Eric Gill, McKnight Kauffer, Lucian Freud, John Minton, Keith Vaughann, Glyn Philpot, Gwen Raverat, Eric Ravilious, Fougasse, Fish, Bawden, Phil May, Ronald Searle, H.M. Bateman, David Jones, etc., etc.,

VALUE? A 'very fine copy' made $27,000 + commission in 2000, in the same year a soiled copy made $13000 with commission. One imagine the silk ties were present in the former copy. Three copies of the limited are currently for sale between $20,000 and $30,000, none fine. Vellum tends to soil or brown with age, so fine copies are things of wonder. The ordinary trade edition (blue) is much prized - it is undated but known to be 1914 and it is hard to find a bright copy for less than £1000. A copy in a modern cloth facsimile binding is a 'Buy it Now' at Ebay at £1450. This kind of binding renewal is unpromising and forces the collector to always have to admit its presence because of its unnatural newness. Nielsen illustrations, presumably broken from his books are said to go for 'hundreds of dollars' - also on Ebay.

Outlook? Auction results indicate a slight softening of his prices, Heritage with its meretricious shop on Melrose stuffed with Rackhams is no more, but the vogue for collecting standard Golden Age illustrated books shows no real sign of abating. However some cash rich book collectors, a fickle bunch, may have now moved on to modern first editions, classic literature, fine bindings and photography.

The Antique Bowie Knife Book

2008-04-22T00:29:00.002Z

Bill Adams. THE ANTIQUE BOWIE KNIFE BOOK. Museum Publishing Company, Conyers, GA, U.S.A., 1990. ISBN: 0962604402

Current Selling Prices
$600-$1200 /£300-£600

COLLECTABLES
552 page knife book that was issued in 1100 copies and apparently sold out on publication. Definitive and darn scarce. Fancy knives- some have highly-decorated hilts, silver and jeweled decoration, and ivory, fine wood, horn or mother-of-pearl grips. Some had memorable labels engraved on them like "Texas Ranger Knife," "Arkansas Toothpick," "Patriot's Self Defender," "Death to Abolition," "Death to Traitors," "Americans Never Surrender," "Rio Grande Camp Knife," and "I'm A Real Ripper." 90% of Bowie knives were made in Sheffield (not a lot of people know that.). A bloody good business until the rise of the Colt revolver. Idle question:Did David Bowie take his name from the knife?

VALUE? Some chaps hold out for $1600 but it can show up at less than half that, with nasty exlib copies a little less. At present there is a fine copy at $400 om ABE that will probably sell unless the knife market is in shambles. The market in this book is indeed a little 'soft' as all copies except this have been sitting there since Summer '06. The $400 may be listed by one of those odd dealers who is actually trying to sell the book. $400 can come in handy especially if the book came in unremarked.

STOP PRESS. The above was written in January 2007. The book seems to be still very much desired with the cheapest an ex lib copy at $550 ('usual library markings, otherwise clean and in very good shape...') and the most expensive at $2000 a copy with no real description -('may have price sticker on cover and very minor shelfwear...). These catchall descriptions save time and on $20 academic books are just about acceptable but for $2000 one expects a little desk work. Maybe the seller was a lawyer when he had a real job.

A decent copy is now at least $800, possibly less for an eagle-eyed Ebayer. A guy with a copy at $1000 which appears to be one of a 100 (from the edition of 1100 copies) states '...with a history steeped in legend, the Bowie is the most famous of American knives. This book shows some of the finest Bowies extant, ranging from the knives of the backwoodsmen to showpieces made for the 19th century expositions and presented by royalty.' I assume from this that the knives were either given to royalty or given by them...anyway the book is alive and well and the $400 fine one at ABE has gone.

Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian; Or, The Evening Redness in the West, 1985

2008-04-18T09:20:00.005Z

Cormac McCarthy. BLOOD MERIDIAN. OR, THE EVENING REDNESS IN THE WEST. Random House., New York, 1985.

Current Selling Prices
$2000-$3000 /£1000-£1500

MODERN FIRST EDITION / WESTERN
Regarded as McCarthy's finest book and apparently about to be filmed by Ridley Scott. He has been collectable for over a decade and with movies being made from his books (including this year's Coen Brothers Oscar success 'No Country for Old Men') his star is in the ascendant. Being selected as an Oprah author may have dramatically widened his fanbase. Mostly his books can be found in first edition and a very decent completist collection could probably still be put together for $10K which would include a signed book or two. An assiduous ebayer, sniping and searching could do it for $5000. He or she probably wouldn't get the luxury one of 50 signed 'Cities of the Plain' or a limpid example of 'Suttree'. Ebay has, actually been the home of some spectacular results for CM with a copy of 'Meridian' signed to a family member (his father?) reaching over $12000 2 years back before it was withdrawn, possibly in order for the buyer to accept an unrefusable sum, possibly because it was found wanting in some aspect.

The highest terrestrial auction result was $8000 for a copy of 'Meridian' signed to one 'Corin' in the Maurice Neville sale at Sotheby's New York, Nov 16, 2004, it was a review copy and included a letter to travel writter Larry Millman. A signed copy came up last year and made $4400 at Swann and at the same sale a slightly used signed 'Suttree' signed by McCarthy (with a letter from the publisher presenting the copy to Robert Penn Warren) made $3500. His 1965 novel 'The Orchard Keeper' made $2000 as long ago as 2001 in 'in rubbed & soiled d/j.'

The worthy official site of the Cormac McCarthy Society has this to say of the book:-

Critics have compared Cormac McCarthy's nightmarish yet beautifully written adventure masterpiece, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, with the best works of Dante, Poe, De Sade, Melville, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and William Styron. The critic Harold Bloom, among others, has declared it one of the greatest novels of the Twentieth Century, and perhaps the greatest by a living American writer. Critics cite its magnificent language, its uncompromising representation of a crucial period of American history, and its unapologetic, bleak vision of the inevitability of suffering and violence.

The novel recounts the adventures of a young runaway, the kid, who stumbles into the company of the Glanton Gang, outlaws and scalp-hunters who cleared Indians from the Texas-Mexico borderlands during the late 1840's under contract to territorial governors. Reinvisioning the ideology of manifest destiny upon which the American dream was founded, Blood Meridian depicts the borderland between knowledge and power, between progress and dehumanization, between history and myth and, most importantly, between physical violence and the violence of language...

Value? Fine copies can be found online at between $2000 and $3000. Watch out for a remainder mark on the top edge, sometimes faint--this can take about a $1000+ off the price. An almost fine copy awaits a buyer at Ebay right now at $2500.

Outlook? Despite one dealer trying to offload a maimed ex library copy for a king's ransom with the words 'almost impossible to find' the book is relatively thick on the ground at present, but may not always be so. As the winner of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Award, Pulitzer Prize and Academy Awards + the thumbs up from Oprah, Harold Bloom and Brad Pitt (who reads 'Cities of the Plain' on CD) he is, seemingly, on his way to canonization as one of the greats and his prices are likely to remain firm and may drift up, especially if more movies are made.

Great Book Finds. Aurel Stein and the Diamond Sutra ( Dunhuang 1907) Part 2

2008-04-10T00:06:00.013Z

In 1907, during his second expedition to Chinese Central Asia, Sir Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, encountered a monk who showed him a hoard of manuscripts preserved in a cave near Dunhuang. Dunhuang was close by the historic junction of the Northern and Southern Silk Roads and the town had been a major point of interchange between China and the outside world during the Han and Tang dynasties. According to the British Museum 'very little money was paid' and 40,000 books and manuscripts were brought back to the Library and now form part of their collection of 100,000 such items.

Among the books (actually a 16 foot printed scroll) was Gautama Buddha's Diamond Sutra ("The Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom of the Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion") the earliest known dated book in the world and of inestimable value. The BM site explains '...It’s dated in a colophon – a note printed at the end of the scroll. The note reads “Reverently made for universal distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents” followed by the Chinese calendar date for 11 May 868. Wang Jie did not make the book himself, but enabled its making – a pious act by which he would have gained much merit...The printed scroll was one of 40,000 other books and manuscripts. This secret library was sealed up around 1,000 AD, a time when this desert outpost of China was threatened by the ambitions of the Hsi-Hsia kingdom to the north. The cave is part of a holy site known as the ‘Caves of a Thousand Buddhas’ – a cliff wall honeycombed with 492 grottoes cut from the rock from the 4th century onwards and decorated with religious carvings and paintings. A monk discovered the sealed entrance to the hidden cave in 1900. Inside, the scrolls of paper and silk had been perfectly preserved by the dry desert air."

Aurel Stein (seen above with native guide and dog) produced many works himself that are valuable--the net reveals items at as much as £14K. Many have poetic, evocative titles such as 'Ruins of Desert Cathay' 'Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan' 'On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks.' This last title from 1933 can turn up in a jacket and make as much as £3K if sharp. On his first great Central Asian expedition Stein followed in the footsteps of Sven Hedin, who in 1893 had found unexplored ruins at the oasis of Khotan, along the southern edge of the great Taklamakan desert in Chinese Turkestan. Hedin was unable to undertake any systematic examination of the site, but Stein convinced the Indian Government under Lord Curzon to supply and fund his archaeological and geographical expedition in 1900-01. Stein's excavations became the first scientific survey of the spread of Buddhism out of India and into greater Asia. It was thus fitting he should bear the Diamond Sutra back to the West. Quite how he did this I am unsure, one imagines a combination of horse and cart, train and steam ship. Even rolled up and compressed 40,000 items would have presented a serious problem in logistics. Something of the excitement of this find is conveyed in Peter Hopkirk's 'Foreign Devils on the Silk Road' and in this lecture by Ray Greenblatt in 2000.

'...Stein was astonished to see that there were more than 500 cubic feet of them. There were manuscripts in Chinese, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tibetan, Runic- Turki and other languages. Without objection from Wang, Stein and Chiang removed some of the manuscripts to Stein's tent each night for further review. Eventually Wang agreed to allow manuscripts in certain categories to be taken to England in exchange for a "substantial" donation to his temple. The amount donated was 130 English pounds.'

As with many of these deals you would probably find that £130 is all Stein had on him at the time. A second buy of this treasure was made in 1908 by the French archaeologist Paul Pelliot. Unlike Stein, Pelliot was fluent in Chinese; so he was able to be more selective in the manuscripts he chose for purchase. The moral of this from a dealer's point of view is not to assume that the first person on the scene gets every single treasure. Until someone finds a cache of Shakespeare manuscripts in darkest Warwickshire these finds are unlikely to be topped.

F. Kingdon-Ward. The Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges, 1926.

2008-04-03T08:33:00.009Z

F. Kingdon-Ward. THE RIDDLE OF THE TSANGPO GORGES. Edward Arnold, London, 1926.

Current Selling Prices
$1200-$3000 /£600-£1500

NATURAL HISTORY / TRAVEL & EXPLORATION
One of those books you occasionally glimpse at book fairs but rarely anywhere else. Early in 1924 Frank Kingdon-Ward went on an expedition to try to discover the falls on the Tsangpo river which were enshrined in Tibetan folklore. With the world's attention on China and its brutal treatment of its own Tibetan people one wonders how parties of explorers would now be received there. Kingdon Ward had heard the legend of a waterfall, over a hundred feet high, in a land which was a virtual shangri-la. Tibetans apparently believed that this was a kind of magical promised land. No westerner had ever seen it. An attempt had been made by a contemporary explorer who made the journey from the Brahmaputra through treacherous country, escaping death narrowly, and then from Tibet he started from Pemako and worked his way along the gorge but was unable to penetrate far enough to see the falls. When Kingdon-Ward began his attempt he was accompanied by Lord Cawdor who found K-W a trying companion and the pace slow "...It drives me clean daft to walk behind him... if ever I travel again, I'll make damned sure it's not with a botanist. They are always stopping to gape at weeds." Cawdor also complained about the food, despite this being the best stocked of Frank's sorties. (They had bought provisions at Fortnum and Mason) Frank was, seemingly, unaware of any problem and barely had a bad word to say about Cawdor.

K-W and Cawdor went further along the gorge than any other explorer and discovered several falls. One they named Rainbow falls which was about forty feet high,however they did not find the magical area that had given birth to the legend. 74 years later a new expedition with Ken Storm, Kenneth Cox, Ian Baker and Hamid Sadar finally discovered the falls (just about a quarter of a mile from where Frank and Cawdor turned back). They combine with the Rainbow falls to complete a compound drop of well over 120 feet. The area around is bathed in constant spray and as a result is a micro rain forest habitat. Certainly a Shangri-la, but not enough room, sadly, for the whole Tibetan race. This lead to a handsome reprint of his book "The Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges" published by Antique Collectors Club. (I am indebeted to the Tooley Watkins blog at Geocities for much of this info.)

Kingdon Ward was primarily a plant hunter and botanist and most of his books are on these subjects. The star find of this expedition was the Meconopsis Betonicifolia. It caused a stir when shown back in England. It is also known as the Himalayan Blue Poppy or the Tibetan Poppy (see above) and is referred to in the title of one of Kingdon Ward's rarest and most prized books 'The Land of the Blue Poppy' (Cambridge, 1913.) A copy inscribed by him but not in great condition made £1700 at last year at Bloomsbury.

VALUE? 'Blue Poppy' is probably the most valuable of his books followed by 'The Mystery Rivers of Tibet' (London 1923) which made £1500 (in frayed d/w) in the same sale and then 'Tsangpo Gorges' which has made about £1300 in auction. The Antique Club reprint has not helped the book's fortunes--it is a handsome production and can be had for about £120 to £200 -with one lunatic asking £500, possibly confusing it with the Edward Arnold first. There are several copies of the first on the web right now in various states of repair with a nice copy at £2200 and another almost as nice at £920. A used but acceptable copy signed by fellower explorer George Forrest that sold at Bloomsbury last year still sits on the web at £1950 - a less than 50% mark up forom the sale price. Condition has always been vital in cloth travel books, almost more important than in literature and modern firsts, and only very sharp copies can get over £1000 with auction results being an unreliable guide to what can actually be achieved in real life--another riddle.

Great Book Finds. Aurel Stein and the Diamond Sutra ( Dunhuang 1907) Part 1

2008-03-31T09:04:00.002Z

Among the great finds one will always have to number the late great Colin Frost's discovery of the Malthus letters at a house sale on the Isle of Wight. A richly deserved find by one of the top post war dealers possessed of incredible intuitive powers and boundless enthusiasm. Also the book dealers who found the 'Blair's Grave' portfolio of 19 William Blake drawings in 2004 and became millionaires (the unfortunate art broker who broke them up appears to have merely broken even which in my book means a loss...) The prize for lateral thinking goes to the guy who approached the French printer Darantiere (who printed most of the great expat books in the 1930s) and bought up a lorry load of multiples and proof copies. The great Catholic bookseller John Thornton made a goodish buy of 16th century religious rarities and incunabula in a West Country monastery in 2006 enabling a very comfortable retirement. Sadly he closed his shop in Fulham which had been the richest source of good books for sale in Britain and a very pleasant place to hang out. Talking of religious books, a dealer I met in Italy told me a monk walked into his father's shop in the shadow of the Duomo (Milan) in 1945 with a vellum Gutenberg bible but he wanted $2000 (or lire equivalent) and his dad was broke so the monk disappeared with his booty. One that got away.

An incredible collection of modern first editions, mostly fine in jackets turned up in the 1980s in a shed in the Australian desert causing dealers to fly in from New York, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. One must not forget the Denis Wheatley library (in supernatural condition) royal collecttions like King Baudoin of Begium, country house libraries, the fabulous file libraries of publishers like Warne, Edwin Arnold and Reginald Ashley Caton and the collections of major dealers like Eric Quayle, Charles Traylen and Tony Hattersley. Then there is the art dealer who recently donated £100 millions worth of art to the nation who earlier in his career had tracked down the wonderful 90s collection of Marc Andre Raffalovich and John Gray--again in a monastery. The recent discovery of 50000 mod firsts, mostly signed, at the house of the murdered attorney Rolland Comstock has been widely reported and celebrated. However the 'Comstock Lode' is like a box of dog eared paperbacks compared to the find made by the great explorer Aurel Stein as he travelled down the Silk Road in 1907. Continued in part two...

Vogue's Book of Houses, Gardens, People 1968.

2008-03-26T18:44:00.004Z

Lawford, Vreeland, Horst. VOGUE'S BOOK OF HOUSES, GARDENS, PEOPLE. The Viking Press, New York, 1968.

Current Selling Prices
$350-$600 /£180-£300

PHOTOGRAPHY / INTERIOR DECORATION
1968. While a younger generation were manning the barricades or kicking out the jams, the older rich beautiful people were having their homes and gardens arranged to perfection and photographed. This was a more elegant age before the TV makeover, trash culture and the cult of mass celebrity. Horst was the appointed photographer. He was the Bruce Weber of his time known for his cleverly lit, painstaking photos of buffed guys hawking their brawn under a Meditteranean sun, beautiful girl models in swimwear and one of Vogue's best-known photographs, Mainbocher Corset (1939) which was 'homaged' by Madonna in a video in the late 90s. That's him below photographed in youth by his one time lover and mentor Hoyningen- Huene.

The Vogue Book with the red cover (there are many with similar titles but you need the 1968 book with photos by Horst) is not especially scarce but always makes good money and has a sort of iconic status among taste freaks, decorators and fashion/ design people. The blurb, very much of its time, says it all:

"...the houses and rooms, furniture and collections, gardens and daily lives of some of the most interesting people in America and Europe are here presented in over two hundred beautiful colour photographs by Horst...from Miss Doris Duke's extraordinary Muslim-inspired house near Honolulu, and State Senator and Mrs. Taylor Pryor's Oceanarium at Sea Life Park, also in Hawaii, we are transported to the revived Georgian splendours of Mr. and Mrs. Desmond Guinness's. Irish castle, and to Mr. Henry Francis du Pont's world-famous estate at Winterthur, Delaware; from the work-rooms and living-rooms of the brilliant designer Emilio Pucci in Florence, to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's magnificently appointed house in the Bois de Boulogne, and to Baron and Baroness Philippe de Rothschild's unique Chateau de Mouton..there are chapters about the young: Mr. and Mrs. Carter Burden, Jr., in their New York apartment, Mr. And Mrs. Cy Twombly in their Roman palazzo, Lord and Lady Eliot at their ancient family seat in Cornwall...this book provides an opportunity to see how a number of well-known and less well-known people live during their private hours, among the possessions they love and in the surroundings they have planned or improved or cultivated.. for anyone curious about the personalities and habits of some of the most attractive and creative people of our time."

Bruce Weber in, in a 1992 television documentary on the elderly Horst, gushed '...the elegance of his photographs ... took you to another place, very beautifully ... the untouchable quallity of the people is really interesting as it gives you something of a distance ... it's like seeing somebody from another world ... and you wonder who that person is and you really want to know that person and really want to fall inlove with that person'. An archive of Horst's photos built up by a German businessman sold last year at auction for several million dollars. Although ignored by Martin Parr and the more serious photo people his name (and also his associates George Platt Lyne and Hoyningen-Huene) are always worth looking out for on books.

VALUE? No copies available for less than $350, a fine copy is listed at $1000, hard to find a respectable copy at less than $450. Its outlook is probably OK as it is becoming harder to find and as time goes by it may take on a period charm. Photo is still very bankable - although this isn't Horst at his best or most typical. There are some photos from it on Flickr including a shot of the Duke Windsoer in a suit so boldly checked that you'd have to be a royal in exile or a welching bookie to get away with it. Avoid ex library copies (unless ex library lite) - a copy sits on a web mall at an outrageous $450 described thus - 'Brodart-covered dust jacket of ex-library reference book (never circulated) with usual marks and stamps. Pages 93-108 are bound in duplicate, Pages 81-92 are missing. Interior pages are clean, tight, and unmarked, except that book opens at page 80. All proceeds go to our public library.' Ex Lib and defective -the kind of copy that should be tossed in the recycling box or priced at $10 for the impecunious Vogue / I.D. collector, if such exists.

Sheila Cousins. To Beg I Am Ashamed, 1938.

2008-03-22T02:27:00.002Z

Sheila Cousins. ( Ronald Matthews.) TO BEG I AM ASHAMED. Routledge, London, 1938.

Current Selling Prices
$500-$4000 /£250-£2000

MODERN FIRST EDITION / SEX / BANNED BOOK

I catalogued a copy recently thus: 8vo. pp 283. Billed as the 'autobiography of a London prostitute.' Publication was stopped in England due to the sexual subject matter (most copies were seized and only a few are known to have survived). Writing of the Obelisk Press Paris edition Neil Pearson in his authoritatative bibliography dismisses the idea that Greene (a close friend of Ronald Matthews) co-wrote this. It is likely that he may have contributed a few passages, and elsewhere (Mockler) it is suggested that he may have looked it over and suggested improvements. Certainly he hung out in seedy parts of London with Matthews and went on pub crawls with him. Matthew chronicles his time with GG in his 1957 oeuvre 'Mon Ami Graham Greene.' Grey cloth very slight soiled, neat name on front endpaper, some sensationalist newscuttings pasted neatly to endpapers about the 1953 reprint- 'ITS STILL A BAD BOOK' - Daily Mirror and the article by Keith Waterhose -'what a shame that her book, crawling back out of the sewers today has not been forgotten.' £750

Neil Pearson's definitive statement " 'To Beg I am Ashamed' was not written by Graham Greene....as far as I am aware that sentence has never appeared in the catalogues of auction houses or book dealers..." has slightly put the kibosh on selling this book. Thanks Neil. However our price compares favourably with an unjacketed copy on ABE at £4995 (you give the guy 5 grand he gives you a fiver change-- I can't see it happening) and another at a 'dream on' price of £7950 in a decent jacket, described thus:

'...This book does not exist - officially! Graham Greene co-authored it with Ronald Matthews. It was to quote Ahearn "Effectively suppressed in England". Greene admitted "knowing the ghost responsible", the book was submitted by Greene's agents at the time (Pearn, Pollinger & Highman). Apart from the Greene flashes which occur throughout - a key clue to the true identity lies in two of "Cousin's" characters being named Graham and Matthew! There was quite a rage about Greene's head at the time - he wisely took himself away from England and spent it in Mexico, thus avoiding a libel action (Shirley Temple) and the storm raging about this book...'

Interestingly the dealer (in South Africa, home of many overpriced mod firsts) generously adds 'Courier Service only for this item. Post will need supplement.' For a book that is said to be very scarce there are too many about, there are 6 on the web right now where it is variously described as 'genuinely rare' or as an 'excessively scarce book.' Our own 'only a few were known to survive' is looking somewhat questionable and may need toning down if any more come to roost.

VALUE? In a jacket a four figure sum is still possible for the Routledge edition. The US first (Vanguard 1938) goes for about £300 in a jacket and the first Obelisk editon (Paris 1938) in yellow 'heavy paper wrappers with fold-over flaps' about £200 for a sharp example. The above press cuttings refer to the Richards Press, London 1953 re-issue which is worth about 40 quid. Last word with Neil Pearson who states '...Greene helped his friend by chipping in with a telling descriptive phrase here and there--phrases he would later quote approvingly when he contrived to review the book...' On the subject of reviews it is odd to see Keith Waterhouse (author of the grubby 'Jubb') taking the moral high ground in these clippings. I guess this sort of prurient outrage played well in the tabloids in the 1950s, just as it does now.

OUTLOOK. Somewaht choppy, probably less than brilliant, although it will always feature as Greene apocrypha and any true GG completist will have to have it and the obsessive completist will need all three editions and will also have to hunt down the elusive first Indian edition published in 1940 by Kitabistan in Allahabad.

Henry Crowder / Nancy Cunard. Henry Music, Paris, 1930 + Negro Anthology 1934.

2008-03-15T17:29:00.004Z

Henry Crowder. HENRY-MUSIC. Hours Press, Paris 1930.

Current Selling Prices
$7500+ /£3600+

NEGRO. ANTHOLOGY ( Made By Nancy Cunard.) Nancy Cunard at Wishart and Company, London, 1934.

Current Selling Prices
$5500-$8000 /£2800-£4000

POETRY / MUSIC / 'PUBLISHED IN PARIS'
'Henry-Music' is a marvelous book to find. In great condition it is worth £5000 and more, but as there were only 150 copies printed it is necessarily rare. When I started in this game in the late 1970s, amongst raffish young dealers it was one of a mantra of rare and treasured books one hoped to find, but seldom did - Globe by the Way Book, Quinzaine for This Yule, Beeton's Christmas Annual, Hobbit, Astra Castra, Questions at the Well, Bear Fell Free, Gent from Bear Creek and so on. The legend of Nancy Cunard is still potent and there are several studies of her in preparation and several biographies, one from 2007. She is now seen as an important figure for her brave and tireless activism in racial politics and civil rights -in print ('Negro Anthology' + the 1931 pamphlet Black Man and White Ladyship, an attack on racist attitudes) and in her political work-- her account of the Scottsboro Boys case was important in bringing world attention to a huge injustice. One poem that she contributed to this book of her lover Henry Crowder's music was recently compared to the work of ICE-T by an earnest scholar in the USA. It is 'Equatorial Way'

'Goin to drink to the last damnation
Of the son o' bitch U.S.A.
Going to send for a conflagration
From down equatorial way...
Last advice to the crackers:
Bake your own white meat -
Last advice to the lynchers:
Hang your brother by the feet.'

Certainly it has the energy and rhythm and anger of modern rap music. Other contributors to this beautiful book with its surrealist Man Ray photomontage covers were Richard Aldington, Harold Acton, Samuel Beckett and Walter Lowenfels. Henry Crowder (1890-1955) is shown top left. He was born Gainesville, Georgia and established himself as a pianist and orchestra leader in Washington, D.C in the 1910s, working alongside Russell Wooding and Duke Ellington. Drafted in 1917 while leading an orchestra at Harvey's Restaurant he was briefly chauffeur to General March. He moved to Chicago in the early 1920s, making piano rolls in 1926, later touring with Jelly Roll Morton. He recorded with violinist Eddie South's Alabamians 1927-1928. They travelled to Europe where, in Venice, Crowder and Nancy (heiress to a shipping fortune) met. They embarked on a turbulent seven year relationship, which culminated in the production of Cunard's monumental 1934 Negro: An Anthology (dedicated to Crowder.) All the songs in Henry Music which have a musical score by HC were supposed to have been recorded but only one disc, with Cunard's "Memory Blues" aka "Boeuf sur le toit", is thought to have been released. It is included on a CD which comes with a recent book by Anthony Barnett - 'Listening for Henry Crowder: A Monograph on His Almost Lost Music With the Poems and Music of Henry-Music (ISBN 0907954367 from Allardyce Barnett Publishers. )

Nancy was, like her contemporary Harry Crosby, 'electric with rebellion' and ran with a fast crowd as an expatriate woman in Paris - they dubbed themselves the 'Corrupt Coterie'. Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon were among her lovers. Sylvia Pankhurst, Janet Flanner, Solita Solano, Kay Boyle, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Norman Douglas were life-long friends. All the books from her 'Hours Press' are collectable with 'Henry Music' probably being the most valuable, although limited editions of Pound's Draft of XXX Cantos and Beckett's Whoroscope are up there in value. There were 100 numbered and signed copies of 'Henry-Music' + 50 unnumbered and signed for private dedications; these latter copies are particularly treasured.

VALUE? 'Henry-Music' is most collected as a Beckett item and represents a heavy investment for any Beckett obsessed completist. Ropey copies have passed through auction at around $1500, but a reasonable copy will always be in advance of $5000 unless you find it overlooked with a pile of 1930s music or lotted with a bunch of outdated art books; the Beckett name on the cover means that it will be spotted by all but the dimmest dealers. You can buy a books published by the Hours Press for as low as £30 --say Aldington's 'Last Straws' or even Roy Campbell's poems. For $250 at the San Francisco book Fair I bought a decent Hours Press Brian Howard ('God save the King') with its John Banting covers and I'm hoping to keep it for a while. There are photos of Henry and Nancy working at the printing press together and it is pleasing to think they may have had a hand in the making of Brian Howard's only book.

OUTLOOK? Nancy Cunard, the Hours Press and the whole 'Published in Paris' schtick were in abeyance a few years back but there are encouraging signs of a revival. Neil Pearson's excellent book on the Obelisk Press, Paris 'A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press' was recently well received and got a deal of publicity. There is a lot of interest in Nancy, often from academics in women's studies; her civil rights work is more relevant than ever and she is an enduring fashion icon. Did anyone ever wear more bangles? Some can be seen in Man Ray's photomontage above. Her 'Negro Anthology' (Wishart, London 1934) seems to be holding its own at about $5000 and more for sharp copies - it has made as much as £5000 (2003) in auction; condition is important, as a large book it can turn up slightly shabby. This is an easier book to find that Henry-Music as there were a 1000 copies. It is said there were copies unsold in the 1960s and it could be bought then as a remainder; one school of thought attributes its rarity to copies being destroyed in the Blitz. Trouble with that theory is the book is not rare, just expensive.

The value comes from the wonderful panoply of contributors - Samuel Beckett (translated 19 of the articles), Ezra Pound, Dreiser, Claude McKay, Zora Neal Hurston, Jomo Kenyatta, Harold Acton, George Padmore, William Carlos Williams, Norman Douglas, Louis Zukofsy, Edgell Rickword, William Plomer, the Paris Surrealist Group, George Antheil, Henry Crowder, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Alfred Kreymborg. There are 6 copies for sale at ABE right now, a copy sold last week at Bloomsbury / Ebay for £2400 + the juice (like other copies I have seen it was slightly affected by damp.) Just one 'beautiful' copy of 'Henry-Music' sits on the web at $15000 with a very high end dealer, a rather modest price for them. It could sell over the weekend or sit there till Bush ignominiously leaves office. The last copy in auction was the Constance Bullock-Davies copy in 2001 which made £1800, an out-of-series copy in the original illustrated boards, condition not noted. As far back as 1977 a copy (warmly inscribed by Crowder to Augustus John) made $1900.

Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930.

2008-03-11T18:48:00.002Z

When does one first begin to remember? When do the waving lights and shadows of dawning consciousness cast their print upon the mind of a child? My earliest memories are Ireland.

It was at 'The Little Lodge' I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as 'the Governess' was announced. Her arrival was fixed for a certain day. In order to prepare for this day Mrs. Everest produced a book called Reading without Tears. It certainly did not justify its title in my case. I was made aware that before the Governess arrived I must be able to read without tears. We toiled each day. My nurse pointed with a pen at the different letters. I thought it all very tiresome. Our preparations were by no means completed when the fateful hour struck and the Governess was due to arrive. I did what many oppressed peoples have done in similar circumstances: I took to the woods.

War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid. It is all the fault of Democracy and Science. From the moment that either of these meddlers and muddlers was allowed to take part in actual fighting, the doom of War was sealed. Instead of a small number of well-trained professionals championing their country's cause with ancient weapons and a beautiful intricacy of archaic manoeuvre, sustained at every moment by the applause of their nation, we now have entire populations, including even women and children, pitted against one another in brutish mutual extermination, and only a set of blear-eyed clerks left to add up the butcher's bill. From the moment Democracy was admitted to, or rather forced itself upon the battlefield, War ceased to be a gentleman's game. To Hell with it!

Winston S Churchill. MY EARLY LIFE: A ROVING COMMISSION. Thornton Butterworth, London 1930.

Current Selling Prices
$600-$12000 /£300-£6000

AUTOBIOGRAPHY / MILITARY / POLITICS
Winston Churchill's memoir of childhood and early adulthood. It was published in 1930: Churchill was 56 and the Conservatives had the year before been defeated in the General Election; so began Churchill's 'wilderness years' during which he concentrated on writing. It would be over a decade before war and war leadership. My Early Life tells of the author's unhappy childhood, schooldays at Harrow, early military experience and foreign travel- action on the North West Frontier, moving on to the Sudan and then the Boer War. It was the basis of the 1972 film Young Winston with the now slightly underused actor Simon Ward (see below.)

The book, which measures 9 x 6 inches, contains 28 maps and illustrations including a frontispiece of Jennie Jerome, Churchill's American mother. The first state of the first edition should have 11 titles on the half title page - several variants are known. There are either 11 or 12 titles listed on the half title page, the cloth can be smooth or coarse, and the titling on the cover can be in either 3 or 5 lines. The cloth is prone to fading on the spine and the book often turns up in elaborate bindings- at present a garish Cosway binding is offered on the web at £6K with a crushed red morocco binding embossed and tooled in gold and with an inset portrait miniature of Churchill. Someone once said of these bindings that they are 'books for people who don't like books.'

The book is distinctly difficult to find in a jacket, a Churchill specialist who is presumably aware of how seldom it is encountered, wants to see a staggering $20,000 for a copy in a somehat chipped 'truly rare' jacket. This is the only copy available and it is not inconceivable a truly loaded punter might 'pony up' for it. Signed copies abound, but WSC is , so far, so well underpinned that his prices stay firm.

VALUE? A decent but not fine copy can usually be found sans d/w for around £200, a bit more in half leather, quite a bit more in full leather and, as noted above, loadsamoney in jacket. Churchill wrote a multitude of books and pamphlets. There are dealers, paying mortgages and raising kids, who deal only in Churchilliana. The book you want is 'Mr. Brodrick's Army (London, 1903)--the first issue (44 pages) was withdrawn and is worth north of £20K, the second issue (104 pages) is also seriously valuable. Early WSC pamphlets are always worth looking out for in political collections. In 2003 a British dealer found his early wraps (actually dark red card) book 'For Free Trade' (1906) while 'scouting' America (he declines to give the State) after a book fair for $5. In order not to rouse suspicion in the shopkeeper he asked for, and got, a 20% discount and turned his $4 into £20K on his return. These things are still possible. Do not confuse this with his 'Why I Am a Free Trader', 'Free Trade for Ever and Churchill Now!' or 'For Liberalism and Free Trade'--all bloody useful but a tenth or less of the value.

Outlook? Churchill collecting began in earnest in the early 1970s and is part of a trend of collecting books by powerful and epoch making figures. They are often sought by affluent and important, even self important, people. Persons of 'high net worth' with little time for reading -the book becomes symbolic of their achievement or aspirations or their heartfelt political sympathies and at the same time has status and, vitally, is a sound investment. Conrad Black was able to write of all his purchases of trophy books as 'research' -to be fair several million dollars later he delivered a doorstop of a book- his 1,280-page biography, 'Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom.'

Ronald Reagan is collected in the same way, there are mansions full of Napoleon collections (Napoleana?) and there is now a discernible rise in Margaret Thatcher values. This will always be a significant part of book collecting, auctions and book fairs and shows no sign of abating. With Churchill the really big money is reserved for presentation copies to other bigwigs- in 1998 someone paid $145,000 for 5 volumes of The World Crisis inscribed by Churchill to Edward as Prince of Wales with 4 ALS loosely inserted. Also in 1998 a My Early Life -an 'advance presentation copy inscribed to Ramsay Macdonald - made $22000, and it would doubtless make more today. Whether he will be collected in 2020 or beyond is hard to say. What is certain is that there is a wealth of stock out there to keep auction houses, collectors and dealers supplied well beyond then.

Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October, 1984.

2008-03-08T03:04:00.005Z

Tom Clancy. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis: [1984]

Current Selling Prices
$400-$1000 /£200-£500

THRILLER/ ADVENTURE / MARITIME
Tom Clancy gave birth to the techno - thriller with this book - his first novel. It is said to have been written with the assistance of current copies of 'Jane's Fighting Ships.' His hero Jack Ryan assists in the defection of a respected Soviet naval captain, along with the most advanced ballistic missile submarine of the Soviet fleet. The movie (1990) stars Alec Baldwin as Ryan and Sean Connery as Captain Ramius. After the success of the movie people started to look out for this book and a whole mystique grew up about how to identify a true first edition. Basically you need 6 blurbs on the back in this order from top to bottom - Jack Higgins, Joseph Wambaugh, Clive Cussler, Edward L. Beach, John Moore, and Stansfield Turner. There should be no statement of edition with no series of numbers, no price on d/j, Clive Cussler review on rear jacket cover must be third one down, ISBN on lower back panel & on lower back of jacket panel.

The 'no price' thing is a catch as no price usually indicates a reprint or, worse, a dreaded BOMC. Watch out for remainder marks along the bottom. There is even someone claiming the book must weigh 1 pound 13 ounces*; one wily vendor claims that bright fresh copies are hard to find because 'most of the small run of 1st printing copies were sold to submariners and have damp stains.' Doubtless it is hard to keep books and their jackets from harm in cramped quarters several fathoms down. It was the first work of fiction published by Naval Institute Press and their most successful book ever; reportedly it was published in an initial print run of some 5000 copies.

Christopher Hichens, the literary man's shock jock, reviewed his 1996 book 'Executive Orders' (874 pages) thus:-

'...the dedication page of this Behemoth carries a lapidary, capitalized inscription, 'To Ronald Wilson Reagan, Fortieth President of the United States: The Man Who Won The War.' And this is only fair. In 1984, the Naval Institute Press paid Tom Clancy an advance of $5,000 for The Hunt for Red October. It was the first fiction that the Naval Institute had knowingly or admittedly published. There matters might have rested, except that someone handed a copy to the Fortieth President, who (then at the zenith of his great parabola) gave it an unoriginal but unequivocal blurb. 'The perfect yarn,' he said, and the Baltimore insurance agent was on his way to blockbuster authorship. Putnam this past August issued a first printing of 2,211,101 copies of his newest novel, Executive Orders, and, on the Internet site devoted to Clancy, mayhem broke out as enthusiasts posted news of pre-publication copies available at Wal-Mart. Clancy's nine thrillers, as well as exemplifying an almost Reaganesque dream of American success, have catapulted him into that section of the cultural supermarket which is always designated by the hieroglyph #1.

So fervent and steady is Clancy's readerbase that he has also branded several lines of books of 'techo tosh' with his name that are written by other authors, following premises or storylines generally in keeping with Clancy's works:
Tom Clancy's Op-Center
Tom Clancy's Power Plays
Tom Clancy's Net Force
Tom Clancy's Net Force Explorers
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.

These are of negigible value as is almost everything else by Clancy, except the limited 'The Sum of All Fears' (1991, 600 signed copies) which can be had for a $100 bill. There are shelves of signed Clancy's at completely unattainable prices many with a much admired dealer named "FlatSigned" and the cutely named 'Books Tell You Why".

VALUE? There are an awful lot for sale and the film is the kind of thing you see on sale for $1 as a Video in thrift shops now. The high tech gadgets now look laughably obsolete with computers running Wordstar with files on separate floppies and programs whirring away on enormous Cray-2 "supercomputers". The wave has broken on the book, a decentish proper first failed to get a bid at $299.99 at ebay last week - recent terrestrial auction records show a marked lack of interest in the book with copies going through at between $300 and $700.

Curiously the highest prices are reserved for proof copies. These do not normally work anymore but in Clancy's case there may be punters for them, if you collect the book a fine/fine signed first is fairly easily acquired at the $1000 level and less, so a proof is the next step. One guy wants $4000 for unsigned 'revised and uncorrected proofs, another $3800 for a "SIGNED, unrevised and unpublished proof. Very good, in the original proof dust jacket with banner reading "Coming this fall! A thrilling novel of undersea suspense from America's leading naval publisher." Outlook? It will always be a major classic of adventure and may be looked on in a hundred years time as we look on '20,00 Leagues Under the Sea' - in the meantime, although it hasn't sunk it is not rising at all.

* Some sellers insist 2 pounds is the right weight.

Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat, 1957.

2008-03-04T08:04:00.005Z

Dr. Seuss. [Theodor Seuss Geisel.] THE CAT IN THE HAT New York, Random House, New York, 1957.

Current Selling Prices
$2500-$10000 /£1250-£5000

CHILDREN"S BOOK / ILLUSTRATED BOOK
Dr Seuss's breakthrough book. The story behind it is well known but bears retelling. In May 1954, Life magazine published a report by John Hersey on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because the books that were being offered them were boring. This was known as the'Johnny Can't Read' controversy. Hersey wrote:-

'...In the classroom boys and girls are confronted with books that have insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children. [Existing primers] feature abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls....In bookstores, anyone can buy brighter, livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who behave naturally, i.e., sometimes misbehave. Given incentive from school boards, publishers could do as well with primers.'

Reacting to this Dr. Seuss's publisher got up a list of 400 mostly one syllable words that he felt were essential and asked him to cut the list to 250 words, and write a book using only those words. Six months later Geisel was still staring at the word list, trying to find some words that rhymed...when he was almost ready to throw in the towel, there 'emerged from his jumble of sketches a raffish cat wearing a battered stovepipe hat.' Geisel checked his list—both hat and cat were on it. Nine months later, using 220 of the words given to him, he finished 'The Cat in the Hat'. The book was a huge success. Its popularity led to the founding of the Beginner Book division of Random House in 1957 with Geisel as president. Dr Seuss was not exactly unknown already and had produced many popular children's books, he had also had a success as a graphic artist and produced the artwork for the famous 1930s 'Flit' adverts. (see below)

He had started out as an academic and ended up at Lincoln College, Oxford in the late 1920s trying to get his Ph.D in English Literature. Legend has it that in classes there he used to doodle in the margins of his notes and a young girl, noticing these drawings, said he would do better as an artist than a dusty old academic. He married her and they ended up in a fine mansion at La Jolla, California where he was a neighbour of Raymond Chandler (and Ronald Reagan.) The name Dr. Seuss was chosen ironically because of his father's hopes that he would one day be a Doctor Of Philosophy. In the family it was pronounced as in 'voice' but it is popularly spoken to rhyme with 'juice.'

Ascertaining a true first. It should have the numbers 200/200 (a price) on the front flap of the d/w and with no mention of the "Beginner Books" series on the rear panel. Watch out for facsimile jackets - unscrupulous sellers have been known to substitute the 1985 facsimile dust jacket on the first edition book. The only difference between the 1985 facsimile DJ and the first edition DJ is the phrase "Printed in U.S.A." on the bottom back flap of the facsimile. Also the jacket's freshness and newness should be a giveaway unless some wily person has aged or distressed it--all the tricks in the book, as it were. I am indebted to the invaluable Children's Picture Book Collecting site for this tip and much other information. The book itself should be in one signature (aka gathering) 2nd issue and later printings have three signatures. Some sellers mention that true firsts have unglazed (not laminated) colour pictorial boards.

VALUE? The highest auction record was achieved in the Falktoft sale in 2001, a pleasing $9000 + the juice, this was for a copy described as having 'a few creases & tiny tears to edges.' It can be found on the web in some profusion with copies from $1000 to as high as $16000 for a very sharp example. Many sellers proclaim its rarity. Unremarkable copies sans d/w sell for only a few hundred dollars or less--the jacket is de rigueur. There are about 25 firsts for sale including the occasional signed presentation copy -almost all signatures are in the edition known as the 'third variant' -i.e with the price 195/195 on the front flap. Dealers are asking between $4000 and $5500 for these.

Auction records show it to be in a gentle and possibly temporary decline, but another high profile result might perk it up. There may be an element of overkill in the current market but it will remain as a landmark book and is still read with delight by today's children. Last word to the bewhiskered wise man of Hampstead - novelist/ ex-dealer and author of 'Children's Modern First Editions" Joseph Connolly, he wrote -'This extraordinary writer has done more to foster literacy in children than most because he manages to combine lunacy with sanity, fun with learning, and quality with exuberant readability."

John L. Parker. Once a Runner, 1978.

2008-03-01T19:06:00.004Z

"Cassidy sought no euphoric interludes. They came, when they did, quite naturally and he was content to enjoy them privately. He ran not for crypto-religious reasons, but to win races, to cover ground fast. Not only to be better than his fellows, but better than himself. To be faster by a tenth of a second, by an inch, by two feet or two yards than he had been the week or year before. He sought to conquer the physical limitations placed upon him by a three-dimensional world..."

John L. Parker. ONCE A RUNNER. Cedarwinds Publishing, Tallahassee, Fla. (1978?) (ISBN: 0915297019)

Current Selling Prices
$80-$200 /£40-£100

FICTION / SPORT
Cult running classic. Number one In Bookfinder's 2007 list of the top ten most searched for books -- above the elusive Football Scouting Methods by the immortal Bill Belichick, Madonna's silver SEX and ahead of Promise Me Tomorrow, one of the countless romance novels of Nora Roberts, so shameful that she refuses to have it reprinted. They don't refuse to reprint Parker's running novel 'Once a Runner' but the 7 or 8 printings since it first appeared have not been enough for consumer demand. About 10 copies (it's a paperback) turn up every week on Ebay, only shagged out examples making less than $100, never less than $80 and decent ones can make over $150. The edition is almost immaterial. I suspect that people buy it there, read it, and then put it up again. I calculate that Ebay make about $3000 a year in fees from this one paperback alone. What's it all about? There are many, mostly positive reviews at Amazon, including these:-

'...the best running book I have ever read....The basic plot is simple and unadorned: Quentin Cassidy, a senior at Southeastern University, embarks on a quest to become the best four-lap runner he can be. Everything else in his life be damned, as it must be, for distance running is the ultimate jealous mistress... really goes into the life and mind of a runner...fantastic, unique novel... It describes the dedication, hard work, and goofiness that is required to be successful... It is a fantastic book and I would highly recommend it for beginners, enthusiasts, or someone who just needs a little motivation.'

Apart from the hero Cassidy characters include John Walton – the world record holder for the mile, and the first person to run a mile in under 3 minutes and 50 seconds. His character is based on that of the famous miler John Walker. Cassidy's race against him is the novel's climactic moment...Not everybody loves it, a dissenting voice says -'...this book is out of print for a reason, it didn't sell well because it's not a very good book. I've read countless books on running over the years and I'm an avid runner and racer but this book is silly and unbelievable in many parts, shallow and inconsistent in others... Don't let the high asking price fool you into believing it's worth your time or money... it's not. Read the Lore of Running, Ultramarathon Man (below), The Cutting Edge Runner, just about anything by George Sheehan (and his writing is not perfect either but better than this drivel), A Shining Season, A Cold Clear Day... you get my point.' Interesting to know there are other contenders, obviously running is a hot subject with an audience large enough to keep underpinning a reasonably findable paperback at a $100 a go.

VALUE? $100 max. On ABE four copies reside for the rich or unresourceful shopper at between $220 and $450 with, as often happens, the more expensive copies being the poorest -- for $400 you can get an ex library copy with the 'usual library markings'. An ex library paperback has to be one of the saddest sights. Outlook? Might be running out of steam... fine copies from the 1980s and copies signed by Parker will probably hold their value but a larger reprint would probably finish the rest off. The ebay crowd will tire of forking out a C note every time someone puts one up. Meanwhile a copy (with no photo) made $112 while I was typing this--it was described thus: 'This is a true classic!! It is vintage and is softcover and has wear and tear but no markings on pages. The front cover is wearing and the front cover is faded a little in places!!'

Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children, 1981.

2008-02-27T21:56:00.009Z

Salman Rushdie. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN. Jonathan Cape, London, 1981.

Current Selling Prices
$1500-$3500 /£800-£1800

MODERN FIRST EDITION / BOOKER PRIZE
Winner of the Booker Prize in 1981 and awarded "The Booker of Bookers" in 1993 for the best Booker Prize winning novel in the first twenty five years of the award. The work is regarded by many critics and readers as the great classic of the late twentieth century. Another critic (Jonathan Bate) quoted in a previous entry on Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude wrote: 'Let us hope that [it] will not generate one hundred years of overwritten, overlong, overrated novels. Enough that it has already inspired such excrescences as Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.' With a discernible backlash against magic realism, with which Rushdie is forever associated, the book is no longer rated as highly as it was - except by earnest book dealers trying to shift it. As a great story teller he will always be collected and many people who were underwhelmed by Midnight's Children were delighted by 'Haroun'--but as a prose stylist he is not seen to be in the class of Nabokov or Borges, and falls a long way short of his ingenious contemporary Martin Amis. It is not the most difficult Booker to find, that honour belongs to Middleton's 'Holiday'. However it is possibly the most valuable - a fine copy in jacket (the spine of which tends to fade) can command over £1000 especially if signed.

There are some dealers charging considerably more than this for copies signed with pre Fatwa signatures--one asking a 'dream on' £5K says of his: '...the signature is nothing like the (understandable) scrawl you get today, but strikingly full, long and beautiful and really different from anything we have seen over the years.' It is true that signed Rushdie books in this century are very common and the signature is hasty, if not perfunctory. The king of the 'get lost' signature is old rocker Lou Reed--on some of his books it looks pretty much like two straight lines and would shame a GP -it goes something like this '___ ____'. They are still quite saleable, mainly because he is unapproachable and unpleasant and perhaps because he is one of the supreme songwriters.

The cheapest signed Lou out there is 'Pass Thru Fire : The Collected Lyrics' at $150. You can buy a signed Rushdie--of his rock novel 'Ground Beneath her Feet' for as little as $15. Of this book the 'India Star' critic C. J. S. Wallia wrote '...with its 575 tiresome pages.. it spreads ample new ground beneath his feet to trod while he assails the reader with massive verbiage straining to be comic. In this muddled melodramatic novel, Rushdie comes off as a wannabe Mel Brooks of contemporary literature -- an aspiration he can't achieve for he lacks the wit.' Wallia proposes an exclusive new club for those who have got past 17 of 'Satanic Verses.' He says of Western critics-'...reviewers have, typically, hesitated to criticize Rushdie, ascribing instead their difficulties in understanding his previous works to their unfamiliarity with his Indian settings and contexts...'

The US edition of 'Midnight's Children' actually precedes the London edition- due to a printers strike in the UK the Cape editions were bound from US sheets--however the UK ed is worth more than the American and is harder to find, being issued in a smaller edition. A case of 'Follow the Flag.'

VALUE? The highest record for any Rushdie book is the £1800 paid in 2001 for a limited edition 'Satanic Verses- --one of 12 copies , signed and bound in full morocco leather. This is a book that will rise ineluctably, mostly because of the furore around the book. An interesting inscribed copy of 'Midnight's Children' surfaced in 2003 and made £1000. The cataloguer notes that Rushdie had worked as a freelance copywriter for the advertising agency Charles Barker; one of the accounts that he handled was that of the financial service group M&G, in the course of which he got to know a Roger Jennings who was working for the company. Rushdie would often discuss Midnight's Children (which he was then writing) with Jennings, and promised him an inscribed copy, once it was published.

The highest auction record for 'Midnight's Children' is £1100 inc premium paid in 2004 for a (presumably fine/fine) copy signed by the author on the title page. This year at Bonham's L.A. a signed copy in near fine jacket made $1440. In the short term the prices of his books have been falling off slightly or , at best, they seem to be bumping along with a lot of auction lots being 'bought in' - indicating over-enthusiastic sellers and apathetic, indifferent buyers. However it is likely that this and his more difficult books will rise in value. Possibly something to do with India becoming richer, his large and enthusiastic 'chattering class' fanbase and the great fame and notoriety (see left) of Salman himself and finally the difficult of finding limpid copies. SEE COMMENTS BELOW - palpable signs of a bull market in the book.

It is possible that he will get a Nobel prize to add to his knighthood. Nobel Prizes, like movies, are always supposed to turbo-charge prices but it seldom happens. When the great playwright, poet and politico Harold Pinter won the Nobel we sold a few signed editions that had been kicking around for years - but so far it has done little for Doris Lessing values. Outlook? Good, if you can wait.

Franz Kafka. The Trial, 1925-1937.

2008-02-26T02:40:00.003Z

“Someone must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

Franz Kafka. THE TRIAL. Victor Gollancz, London, 1937.

Franz Kafka. THE TRIAL. Knopf, New York, 1937.

Franz Kafka. DER PROZESS. Verlag Die Schmiede, Berlin 1925.

Current Selling Prices
$500-$13000 /£250-£6500

CLASSIC LITERATURE / DYSTOPIAN FICTION
Major world classic. When people use the word 'Kafkaesque' they are referring to a kind of powerlessnes in the face of a faceless bureaucracy, with vague suggestions of impending doom- marked by a 'senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity' (Wikiman)-as in a 'Kafkaesque nightmare' or as indeed in Kafka's posthumously published masterpiece 'The Trial' ('Der Prozess.') Everybody can identify with his chilling tale- with its surreal ending and dark humour. 'He sounds like my kind of guy!" said Bill Gates on being told his corporate trials (Microsoft's monopoly) were like the ordeals of Joseph K. Terry Gilliam's 1985 movie 'Brazil' is all Kafka--starting with a Joseph K type arrest. The trial of Stephen Ward, the hounding of the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan for accusing Blair of 'sexing up' the evidence on weapons of mass destruction, the whole phenomenom of 'extraordinary rendition' and 'Gitmo' itself are all 'Kafkaesque.'

Nabokov, sometimes grudging in his praise of other writers, described Kafka as "the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him." W.G. Sebald, in an interesting essay on Kafka's Jewishness (and also his moviegoing habits) states that there are more books about Kafka than any other writer. He is reviewing Hans Zischler's 'Kafka Goes to the Movies'--an interesting piece of forensic Kafka scholarship by the great Wim Wenders ('Kings of the Road') Godard, Chabrol and Spielberg actor. Sebalds's claim is possibly a Germanocentric exaggeration--Kafka must surely be in the top ten, but as a bookseller I have seen more books on Shakespeare, probably more on Joyce. Others in the top ten would be Proust, Byron, Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, Rilke, Pound, Eliot and maybe the beloved Samuel Beckett.

VALUE? 14 copies of the Schmiede 1925 German first have appeared in terrestrial auctions in the last 2 years making between $400 and $13200. Obviously the book is not scarce but it is hard to find in 'fresh' condition--a pretty decent copy made $1800 in Germany 2006 and at Christie's New York last year $13200 was paid for a copy described thus:

'8vo. Original cloth and printed paper label; original pictorial dust jacket (very minor chipping to ends of spine panel, minor splitting to edges of panel).FIRST EDITION, A FINE COPY of Kafka's unfinished masterpiece, edited by Max Brod and published posthumously. In the original dust jacket designed by Georg Salter.'

The British 1937 edition, first translated from the German by Willa & Edwin Muir, has a five page epilogue by Max Brod. It is scarce in the jacket and less so without. Copies can be found for about £200 and 10 times that or more for examples in the yellow Gollancz jacket. The U.S. Knopf edition seems to go for $500 to $1000 in jacket depending on condition and is also translated by the Muirs--it is easier to find and is less desired than the London edition. First editions are sometimes bound up in leather and sold as fine bindings, possibly to insensitive lawyers. The book is sometimes criticised by lawyers for being poorly researched in the legal department; however Kafka is not John Grisham. Outlook? Kafka is steadily on the rise, his work is just as timely now as 90 years ago + the books are becoming hard to find, especially 'The Castle', "The Trial' and to a lesser extent 'Metamorphosis.'

A while back on a house call in Norwich I came across yet another critical work on Kafka. The seller told me it was by her ex-husband and that, in the course of writing it, he had tracked down a clutch of Kafka letters. I asked where they were (that old dealer instinct!). The writer had worked out that the daughter of an old love of Kafka's (presumably Dora Diamant) was living in Yorkshire(?) and he had visited her and she had given the letters to him. He had, after his researches, donated them to his college library--generous acts all round as a one page letter to an actor (oddly enough mentioning Dora) sits on ABE now at £17K. It says:-

"Hardt, vielen Dank für das Telegramm; 'im Geistersaal' lesen Sie, heisst es dort, nicht ganz ohne Verstand. Nun so fern ich von Berlin auch bin, so fern doch nicht, dass ich von den Vorträgen nicht auch ohne Telegramm gewusst hätte, nur leider, nur leider, ich kann nicht kommen. Nicht nur, weil ich heute nachmittag übersiedelt bin mit dem ganzen Krimskrams der mächtigen Wirtschaft, die ich führe (die Übersiedlung war noch einfach genug dank der Hilfe der freundlichen Überbringerin dieses Briefes Frl. Recha Fertig) sondern vor allem deshalb weil ich krank bin, fiebrig und die ganzen Berliner 4 Monate abends nicht aus dem Hause war. Aber könnte ich Sie hier in Zehlendorf einmal sehn nach so langer Zeit? Zum morgigen Abend kommt ein Frl. Dora Diamant, um diese Möglichkeit mit Ihnen zu besprechen. Leben Sie wohl und Segen über Ihren Abend. K."

Wikipedia states that all Dora Diamant's letters were seized by the Gestapo in 1933, however, unless this tale is apocryphal, it appears some got away and also never got into the hands of dealers either.

MANUSCRIPTS The manuscript of 'The Trial' sold for $2 million in 1988, which adjusted for inflation is higher than the recent 7 page Potter MS and well in advance of the $2.4 million paid for the Kerouac 'On the Road' scroll sold by Christies in 2005. "I would place Kerouac in the same league as Kafka, Joyce and Proust, and we have sold manuscripts of all of those authors for substantial sums," said Chris Coover, senior specialist in manuscripts at Christie's. Auctions are a world where price confers status --so Kafka, Proust and Joyce are lumped in with a vastly lesser writer like Kerouac. Kerouac is now rated as a world shattering genius because a guy possessed of a football stadium forked over a couple of million dollars. Likewise a laughably bad painter like Bouguereau is rated higher than, say, Max Beckman, Chritian Schaad, Simeon Solomon or Nicholas de Stael because a thick movie star (Stallone) paid two million dollars for one of his kitsch pix of a flock of flying nudes. I prefer the flower fairies of Cicely Mary Barker. I append a Bouguereau image below. In New York there is a movement afoot to get him known as the greatest painter who has ever lived (and Ron Paul will be the next president!)

Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970

2008-02-21T01:15:00.013Z

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Harper & Row, New York and Evanston, & Jonathan Cape, London: 1970.

Current Selling Prices
$450-$2000 /£220-£1000

MODERN FIRST EDITION/ SOUTH AMERICAN LITERATURE/ MAGIC REALISM
This book has sold over 36 million copies. An epic tale, a long narrative fiction said to metaphorically encompass the history of Marquez's native Colombia even the whole of Latin America. It is considered García Márquez's masterpiece -the New York Times described it as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." As I recall the same sort of thing was said about 'Trainspotting' - 'the best book ever written by man or woman.' The novel is the history of the founding, development, and death of a human settlement, Macondo (said to be based on GGM's home town Aracataca) and of the most important family in that town, the Buendias.

A great backpacker classic constantly recommended and passed around. Often cited as the greatest of all Latin American novels but forever associated with the now slightly tired Magic Realist school of writing, Marquez (known to his devotees as 'Gabo') and his masterpiece are beginning to be re-evaluated. The Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolano denounced him as a kind of cultivated sellout who was “thrilled to know so many presidents and archbishops" and added that most Nobel Prize winners were 'jerks'. He also famously declared that magic realism 'stinks.' Sadly Bolano left the planet in 2003 aged 50; his great spirit and courage are much missed.

VALUE? You want the American edition, for some reason (probably to do with Americans having more money) it sells for at least twice the price of the London printing. You also want the first state of the U.S. edition to get over $1500. This is generally recognized to be an exclamation point / mark at the end of the first paragraph on the front flap--after the word 'America'. There are copies on ABE as high as $3000 and no fine copies for less than $2000. In auction it has made as much as $3000 (2002) in less than fine first state jacket, 2006/2007 results however see it making $1500 or so, possibly indicative of a softening of prices.

The British edition (above) unless immaculate, faultless and pristine struggles towards £200. A part time UK dealer I knew in the 90s sent his copy to Marquez asking for a signature and the book came back a few months later with a fullsome signature. Even then it was a £1000 book signed, now possibly double or more. By the way sending books to authors for signing is something of a gamble - Thomas Hardy used to keep all the books sent to him neatly shelved in a spare room. The true first 'Cien Anos de Soledad (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1967) makes about $3000. A fragile book, although 5000 were printed most were 'read to ruin'--signed copies can be seen on the web at $10000, although auction records only show a high of $3000 for a signed Buenos Aires first--condition may have had something to do with it ('old tape stains, a few creases, soiling, faint writing impressions to covers, front cover fragile with front joint splitting at bottom, some of spine lettering retouched...')

Outlook? Uncertain, possibly choppy - the book may be the Don Quixote of the future and make magic sums of money or it may have hit a ceilling. The book has pride of place in the mostly predictable selection '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Expire...' (Waterstones' bible--see below) and has been on many other 'greatest ever' lists. There are boxloads of U.S. firsts out there for sale right now and critics are starting to put the boot in to Magic Realism and even Gabo himself. Jonathan Bate in a Sunday Telegraph series ”Which are the most overrated authors, or books, of the past 1,000 years? wrote:-

'...The book is so in love with its own cleverness that it is profoundly unreadable. It is generally credited with inaugurating the genre of "magic realism" novels which combine the matter-of-fact narrative style of conventional realistic fiction with fantastic nonsense such as levitation and alchemy. García Márquez is at his most characteristic when a woman ascends to heaven whilst hanging her washing out on the line. Other ingredients of magic realism include gypsies, tarts with hearts, dwarves, tricksters and a cast so large and confusing that you need a family tree to keep track of the plot. Márquez and his followers are sophisticated urban intellectuals who feign reverence for the simple wisdom of peasants. Myth, fairytale and folklore are wonderful things in themselves, but it is preposterous to imagine that mingling them with domestic mundanity will somehow puncture the bourgeois complacency of our time.
Let us hope that One Hundred Years of Solitude will not generate one hundred years of overwritten, overlong, overrated novels. Enough that it has already inspired such excrescences as Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.'