Tardis and the art of bargain hunting

Ever fantasised about hijacking the Tardis and going back in time to bag books that were going for pennies or a shilling ( or even gratis ) and returning to a UK in recession and selling them for tens or hundreds of thousands ? Of course you have. Mind you, you’d have to deal in the correct currency, but a few visits to auctions houses or coin dealers might solve the problem. But do take a stout bag (perhaps a large backpack) and plenty of cash.

1) Shelley’s Queen Mab (1813 ), a few old pence

    Shelley’s Revolt of Islam (1818) 6d.

In 1822, following Shelley’s death, wily old atheist Richard Carlile somehow managed to bag around 180 sheets of the privately printed poem, the author having already given away about 70 bound copies to friends. Ideally, you would need to get there before Carlile, but if you were too late, the radical rascal might do a deal. Fresh out of jail, he would need the money. If you bagged the lot for £5, you might struggle to carry the sheets back home to 2012, but it would be worth it.  Harrington has a association copy  for £14,500, but even if you consigned ordinary copies ten times a year to auction houses in various parts of the world  over a period of ,say, eighteen years, you’d end up (after paying commission) with around £1.5m profit !

Shelley’s Revolt of Islam, which was published at the poet’s own expense in an edition of 750, did so badly in 1818 that in 1829 the family ( Shelley’s widow or pater, Sir Timothy ) sold the unbound sheets to  pirate bookseller John Brooks, in bundles of 25 for sixpence a copy. Brooks then sold them in his bookshop for half a crown (12 1/2p). You could do much better than Brooks in 2012. Actually, over £100, 000 better.

2) Keats’ Endymion (1818). A penny halfpenny.

Publishers Taylor and Hessey were so alarmed at sales that they sold the remaining sheets of Keats’ long poem to a bookseller /waste paper merchant called Edward Stibbs for a penny halfpenny (half a pee) a copy. This Stibbs character then paid a jobbing bookbinder tuppence halfpenny ( 1p) to bind some sheets and the resulting bound volumes were sold in Stibbs’s Strand bookshop for 1s 6d. History doesn’t record exactly how many sets of sheets were bound or what happened to those that weren’t. Had you landed in the London of the original Tom and Jerry in 1821 doubtless you could have found Stibbs’s shop and done a deal with him for all the sheets  over a jug of ale and a visit to The Fives Court  to see Bill Neat box . But whatever you do, don’t mention that a copy of a bound Endymion in 2012 would fetch a cool £6,000 !

3) A ticket for Shillibeer’s Omnibus (1829). One (old) penny upwards.

It’s not worth the risk of drowning to snaffle a Titanic menu, but land in 1829 instead  and while you’re buying the unsold sheets of son Percy’s Revolt of Islam for a bargain while also  checking out Mr Peel’s new-fangled ‘bobbies’, you could make your way to the New Road and try collecting  some used bus tickets from the floors of Mr George Shillibeer’s new patent Omnibus. The earliest ‘bus tickets ever issued in the UK rarely, if ever, appear on the market, but when they do they generally make more than a £100. Just think of how many you could cram into your bag. 

4) Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyiat of Omar Khayyam (1859) 1d or 2d.

 Whizz back to the year 1861 and make your way to the Castle Street bookshop of Bernard Quaritch, where in the bargain box you’d find priced either at one, two or four old pennies, many copies of the remaining stock of young Mr Fitzgerald’s translation of the Persian classic, which had found no buyers at the original 1859 price of one shilling. Grab as many as you can, and in case scholar Whitley Scott and some of his literary cronies, haven’t bought their own copies, leave some in the box for them to discover. Even if you only managed to buy 50 copies, at the 2012 price of around £28,000each, those slim volumes would be worth around £1.5 m today.

5) Catalogue of Manet and the Post impressionists (1910) One shilling at the door.

Programme the Tardis to land off Bond Street on or about 8  November 1910. Here you will find the Grafton Galleries, where an exhibition of poncy  foreign ‘ artists ‘, most of whom couldn’t even draw properly, should be worth a look. While you’re there buy twenty or more catalogues at a shilling a pop. Roger Fry might be on the till and you could possibly bump into Virginia or Lytton.  Even without illustrations, copies of the catalogue now sell for well over £1,000, so that’s a cool £20,000  profit. Now that’s what I call ‘making an impression ‘.

Ain’t time travel a wonderful thing ? [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. A fascinating game, but don't forget the 'Diamond as big as the Ritz' factor - with so many duplicates of these items the market would flatten unless you teased them out over a decade or two... the best move at the Post Impressionists would be to swan around with your catalogue, buy £1000 worth of pics, about a dozen (they were on sale) concentrating on heavy hitters like Van Gogh and Cezanne, load them into a Tardis Transit Van parked around the corner in Haunch of Venison Yard, come back to now and bang them in auction and then look for your name on the Sunday Times list (£1.2 Billion). You could keep the catalogue as a memento -the money, as always is in the art.

Never mind the length…

I once sold a small folded sheet of printed paper with a hole through the middle of it for over £300. Mind you, it was an exceedingly rare printed example in Latin of Lord Northumberland’s address from the scaffold in 1552, possibly published on the Continent for propaganda purposes. Weirdly, one previous owner who evidently ‘didn’t have the Latin’ thought it was something to do with boar-hunting ! According to the auction house, without the tiny hole (which affected text) it may have fetched twice or even three times as much. Sigh.

So, let’s look at one or two of the shortest works ever published and the extraordinary prices they command.

George Santayana, Lines on leaving the Bedford Street Schoolhouse (Boston 1880) Four pages. $750

The great Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana is perhaps more appreciated in his adopted USA than in the UK, which may explain why his four page Lines on leaving Bedford Street Schoolhouse bears such a large price tag. The short poem, his first publication, appeared when he was just 17 and on his way to a brilliant career at Harvard. Most of his subsequent published works, which in addition to philosophical treatises promoting his particular brand of scepticism and pragmatism, include a novel, volumes of memoirs and poetry, fetch nothing like this high figure, though naturally, like any other original thinker, he has his collectors.

American Declaration of Independence, 1776. Print run of 500. $8.14 million


In 1776 five hundred ‘official ‘broadsheets declaring the independence of the United States were rushed off the press and distributed, presumably to lawmakers and politicians, across the new nation. Over the years various copies, in various states of repair, have been found, in public collections, framed behind glass or among the papers of deceased individuals in the US. Up to 1987 only three copies were known to be in private hands, but in this year a browser found a picture in a garage sale in Pennsylvania and bought it because he liked the frame. We’ve all done it. However, on removing the art work he discovered an almost mint copy of the Declaration being used as a lining. Possibly it had once been proudly displayed in the frame, only to be supplanted by the artwork at some point.

The lucky owner hung onto it for four years, until he consigned to the Sotheby’s where it sold for $2.42 m in 1991. Nine years later it was bought at auction by Norman Lear, the TV producer, for a whopping $8.14m. In 2006 a varnished copy of the 1820 edition, which the wife of a pipe fitter had donated to a charity shop, was bought for $2.48 by another jammy browser, who sold it on for a cool $477,650. Other copies must still be out there.

Single pages

Although, strictly speaking, single sheets torn from very ancient books don’t belong here, some opportunistic online dealers still try to convince punters that a single printed page from any black-letter work printed before 1600 is valuable per se. For instance, two ABE dealers from Glastonbury and Cumbria both have different single pages from the Udall translation of The Paraphrases of Erasmus (1548) for sale at £55 and £95 respectively, slightly ambitious when one considers that the whole volume of 900 plus pages can be had for around £2,500. It’s a very rare book, admittedly, but not exactly incunabula. Better value, considering that it is the very first book to be printed using moveable type, is a single page from the Gutenberg Bible, which retails at the Great Site in the USA at around $100,000, according to which section of the book it comes from. In May Bloomsbury will be selling a page from a Gutenberg, so it will be interesting to see what such a rare item fetches. The estimate is £25,000- £30,000 [R. M. Healey.]

Many thanks Robin. Talking of one sheet items one must not forget Joyce's broadside poem 'Gas from a Burner' (Trieste, 1912) which leaves little change from $20,000 and the one page poem 'Winter Ship' distributed by Sylvia Plath on the streets of Edinburgh in 1960. Only 60 copies and worth about £1500.Kerouac's 1966 broadside poem 'A Pun for Al Gelpi' is worth about the same and there are countless ephemeroids in 4 and 5 figures (like a ticket to a Mozart concert or last week's Titanic menu.) As for leaves from the Gutenberg Bible an incomplete copy was broken in the 1920s and leaves were issued by A Edward Newton in a book called 'A Noble Fragment'. 23 copies have shown up since 2000 and the last 4 made just over $40000 each and one in 1998 with 4 leaves made $85,000. Leaves from Shakespeare Folios also appear and make useful sums...

Unsinkable….

Recently TV schedules have been flooded with Titanicana. It’s the same online and in Waterstones. But Titanic mania is no new phenomenon. For many decades anything directly associated with the ill-fated liner has been collected-- from postcards, letters, autographs, telegrams, menus, brochures plates, serviettes, china , rugs, towels….The loss of the Lusitania in 1915 (1,198 people drowned) has never caught the public imagination in the same way ; nor will (presumably) The Costa Concordia, though as we speak some survivors of the latter are probably putting their own menu cards on Ebay.

Predictably, this centenary year has seen a slew of new books— re-creation, speculation, memoirs, fantasy, even crime. The first book on the disaster-- the memoirs of a crewman who survived-- appeared in 1912, and ever since, the presses have been rolling. By now we probably know all there is to know about who and what was lost. Today, the lists of ‘ famous ‘ passengers tend to focus the half dozen or so multimillionaires aboard, but a far greater figure lost that night is missing from most lists I’ve seen so far. This is W. T. Stead, the pioneering journalist who deserves to be remembered for ever as the man most responsible for exposing child prostitution in Victorian England. I sold a copy of his biography two years ago. Perhaps I should have hung onto it. Much valuable art was doubtless lost too, but the best known example was undoubtably the ‘Great Omar’, the most spectacular jewelled binding of the modern period, which had only been completed the year before by Sangorski and Sutcliffe in London and was on its way to an exhibition in New York City. I don’t know if fish are partial to leather, but I imagine that unless the book was hermetically sealed in a metal case, sea creatures would have got to it pretty quickly. And if the jewels were swallowed as well it’s a ten billion to one chance that they will ever be recovered.

Menus are not usually art works, but they are easy to stow away in the event of a ‘unsinkable’ liner going down. So it comes as no surprise that

Titanic menus turn up occasionally. The most expensive menu ever sold—a single piece of card detailing the final luncheon for First Class passengers, which was slipped into a hold-all by a well-heeled passenger, made a riveting £70,000 in March ( ‘some damp staining, but otherwise in good condition for its age‘ as one dealer might say. The only item likely to be worth a great deal more would be the ship’s log, but unless Captain Smith got it smuggled out in another piece of luggage, there is little chance of this turning up in someone‘s attic. Less appealing, but probably easier to find, is a Titanic launching ticket, which fetched £35,600 at the Bonham’s centenary sale. On ABE you can buy a single piece of ‘stationary’ from the Olympic for $300. In my local saleroom Titanic postcards, photos and telegrams come up rarely, but I never bother to inspect them. I guess they must be at the low end of the market, for they seldom make much money.

Anyone with a genuine interest in the social and marine engineering aspects of the Titanic era in luxury steamships, rather than in low-brow memorabilia, should perhaps opt for White Star Line brochures of the period. The most expensive seem to be those that describe the Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic. From California you can purchase for $2,000 a White Star Line brochure of 1912 issued prior to the launch of the two liners . This 24 pages of promotional guff, which included the hubristic buzz word ‘unsinkable‘ to described both vessels, once belonged to the art director of It’s a Wonderful Life, Jack Okey. I wonder if the director of Titanic used something like it to research his box office smash.

For $1,500 a much more substantial item, volume 90 of Engineering Magazine (July – December 1910)—910 pages, including drawings, photos and technical details of the architecture, steering gear, boilers, electrics, etc—of the Olympic class liners, can be yours. It’s lot to pay for what is, essentially, a bog standard magazine of mechanics, but we’re talking about the Titanic here. One of the most interesting features described are the lifeboats and the regulations concerning them. As we know, these lifeboats played a pivotal role in the tragic story.

But the biggest bargain on ABE is probably a first edition of The Loss of the SS Titanic by Lawrence Beesley, which is priced at a reasonable $300. Beesley, a survivor from one of the lifeboats, published his gripping first hand account just nine weeks after the disaster. With its 302 ‘ hair-raising’ pages it remains one of the best books of its type. [R.M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin, topical stuff. I often wonder if these cults will ever end Titanic, Jack the Ripper, James Bond, Baron Corvo, Lawrence of Arabia, Churchill, Sherlock Holmes, Alice etc., As far as I can see only Lawrence (and possibly Churchill) are not going up in value. I am not sure Lord Fellowes new Titanic series helped the cause...See our earlier postings on Titanic collectables for more info, including the strange and rare novel 'Wreck of the Titan' (1898) which predicted the tragedy.

Warhol, Madrigal's Magic Key, Joyce & Caedmon

Occasionally I spot the book Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish (Doubleday NY 1952) and get mildly excited because it has illustrations by one 'Andrew Warhol' and must represent some of his earliest published work. He was 24 at the time. The book is really only worth about $50 in fine shape, simply because there are a lot about. Much, much rarer is the record that came out at the same time and had Warhol's illustrations from the book on the covers of the 2 albums.

A decent copy sold on Ebay last year for $4550. The record was made by the Wible Language Institute of Allentown, Pa. According to the sellers, their copy was in better shape than the one featured in the Paul Maréchal book Andy Warhol: The Record Covers 1949-1987, Catalogue Raisonne, which also stated that the only known copy existed in The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. It is not stated whether they had both albums…

Andy had done 5 covers before this, the first was the cover of a Carlos Chavez album A Program of Mexican Music. The illustrations of Aztec musicians on the cover of the Chavez album were copied by Andy from the Codex Florentinus. Interestingly the illustrations for Madrigal's Magic Key have a similar simple hieroglyphic style to the Codex illustrations.

At nearly $5000 this must make it one of the most valuable 'talking' records. James Joyce recorded a couple of 78 rpm records in the 1920s. The first in Paris 1924 was of him reading from Ulysses - the recording took up one side of a twelve-inch disc and it lasts just over four minutes. It was organised by Sylvia Beach through the Paris branch of the Gramophone Company (which owned the label His Master’s Voice) 30 copies were produced and it is extremely hard to find. Beach kept a couple of records herself, and admitted that she later sold them at a stiff price when she was hard up. Value? Probably several thousands, auction records shows merely this related curiosity from 33 years ago:

Joyce, James, 1882-1941 - Signature, 27 Nov 1924. Diameter about 4 inches. Paper disc designed to fit the centre of a gramophone record presumably for a reading of Ulysses. Issued by Shakespeare & Co. - Sotheby's, Mar 13, 1979, lot 388, £380 ($771.40)

Joyce's second record was made in 1929 at the Orthological Institute in Cambridge under the aegis of C.K. Ogden. The recording of JJ reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle took up two sides of a twelve-inch disc and it lasts eight and a half minutes. It sold for two guineas (£2 2s), a large amount of money at the time. It sells for towards £1000 in good shape with a decent sleeve and is not scarce...there are five online as we speak and it is an auction staple.



Other valuable talk records include LPs from the literary record producer Caedmon from the 1960s and 1970s. Kurt Vonnegut reading from Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle etc., can make £100 or more, Anthony Burgess reading A Clockwork Orange is rare and worth several hundred dollars, William Faulkner reading his Nobel Prize Acceptance speech is exchangeable for a C note. Also collectable and of some value are Caedmon recordings by Tolkien, Dahl, Sendak, Bemelmans, Dylan Thomas and odd items like The Borrowers read by Claire Bloom and extracts from Narnia read by Anthony Quayle. It's a rich field and the records can sometimes be found (overlooked and asleep) mixed in with collections of classical and rock albums.

Working for Oxfam…

Does the antipathy among booksellers for the book- hoovering activities of charity shops, particularly Oxfam, still exist? I ask because when I was a subscriber to the now defunct Book and Magazine Collector I recall an exchange of letters on charity shops that lasted for about three months. The tone of the letters from dealers was noticeably hostile. The strongest complaints always concerned the fiscal advantages enjoyed by charity jobs over those dealers in towns where these shops were in unfair competition with them. Dealers complained that people donated rare books to charity shops instead of selling them to dealers, thereby benefitting both dealer and vendor. Naturally, what was not mentioned was the fact that because most people prefer selling to giving away books, a dealer still had a good chance of making a living, either from buying directly from vendors or by bidding at auction. Nor was it mentioned that the percentage of good books to rubbish received at the online reception depots (called hubs ) was much lower than those encountered by dealers buying at auction. Which meant, of course, that much time and human resources are wasted by Oxfam in sorting and then chucking out the dross which dealers would spend in sorting and pricing genuinely saleable books.

I can speak from experience, having worked for a while as a cataloguer at one of these Oxfam hubs, where I found a few valuable items, including some modern firsts, association copies and early printed music by Mozart and Beethoven, but percentage-wise nothing like the number of treasures that are popularly imagined to turn up at these depots. For every Beano Annual number one ( £4,500 from a shop in St Andrews ) there are 15,000 trashy paperbacks, Worlds Classics and school textbooks.



In their resentment dealers perhaps forget that charities exist to do good—to improve water facilities in Ethiopia or treat glaucoma in India. When a copy of Gerard Ansdell’s legendary photo-journal, A Trip to the to the Highlands of Viti Levu ( 1882 - photo above), which in late 2009 had been handed into the Teignmouth branch of Oxfam , made a record-breaking £37,000 at auction, a spokesman proclaimed that the money would buy 1,500 goats, feed 5,300 families or bring safe water to 41,000 people. It should also be said that the only charity workers who make a living are shop managers and the administrators at HQ. Many volunteers, who are often retired or unemployed , work the same number of hours in these shops and depots that most dealers devote in their own businesses. Moreover, a few are perhaps as clued up as many dealers, but unlike the latter have no chance to make money from their unpaid roles as cataloguers.

This, of course, is not entirely accurate. It is disingenuous to assume that well-informed book sorters in charity shops are not given the occasional chance to benefit from their close contact with the more valuable books donated , especially in the less professionally run charity shops. If a volunteer finds a first of G. S. Marlowe’s I am Your Brother in a dust jacket and asks the shop manager, who hasn’t heard of Marlowe, if he can buy it for £10, the offer is likely to be accepted. The store manager is more likely to have heard of Seamus Heaney, which is why a copy of his incredibly scarce debut volume, Eleven Poems (1965) together with another first by Michael Longley, was selected out by a sorter and made it to the auction house, where the pair fetched £3,500.

I must also say that in the case of Oxfam, these sorters deserve the occasional bargain—without them the pricing would be left to ill-informed amateurs, and the charities concerned would suffer. At my hub I was the only specialist book cataloguer among a team whose own specialist knowledge lay mainly in the field of vintage clothing. My boss, the hub manager, knew nothing of books, rare or otherwise, and was overjoyed, if somewhat sceptical, when I announced that I had found a rarity, which was not often. When I uploaded details of the sheet music I seem to recall putting a price of around £600 on this item, having to my surprise and chagrin already been informed that the treasure was not being considered for auction. So there might be a little truth in the often heard charge that because of its market dominance Oxfam has become ever so slightly blasé about maximising its income generation.

I would love to know how many and how often good and rare books are selected out by hub workers. The online Oxfam pages can provoke bitterness and envy mixed with howls of delight from dealers and collectors alike, but the tales of rare books that escaped the notice of the sorters only to end up in the trash piles will, I suggest, never be told. [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. Aye, there's the hub. As the b'stard Urquhart used to say "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment." I guess if an Oxfam bookshop sets up in your provincial high street right by your second book emporium your days are numbered-in Woodbridge near me 2 bookshops were blown away by charity shops. There is a lot of bad feeling out there, a recent bookshop that closed down sent its books to the landfill 'as a matter of principle' rather than to charity shops-- it's that bitter. However when just one rare photo book can buy 1500 goats and decrease the suffering of forgotten peoples the arguments start to falter..

For me the books in them are not especially cheap and generally uninspiring, I usually stick to DVDs and talking books. They have become receptacles for the books that low key bookshops used to sell- if a book is any good they have usually looked it up on ABE and put the right price on it which is, of course, the wrong price.

Stephen Fry & The Failiure Press

THE FAILIURE PRESS. Privately Printed, King's Lynn 1973 +

We have, for mostly commercial purposes, recently gone on Twitter as AnyAmountBooks and I find myself occasionally reading tweets from the man with 4 million disciples (we have 80.) What is noticeable is how early the tweeting starts...perhaps like Baroness T he only sleeps 4 hours a night. This reacquaintance with his work has prompted me to revisit a posting from June 2008.

I remember reading about the Failiure Press in Moab is my Washpot and making a note to look out for these elusive ephemeroids. The misspelling btw is deliberate. Recently I found 4 issues, 2 of which had crosswords by the 16 year old Fry, who by the evidence of his clues was already a prodigy and a polymath. Unless he contributed to some school mag at Uppingham this represents his first work in print--what the bibliographers call B1. The second issue has his first crossword and the third issue has the solutions and the second crossword. I have the first issue, fascinating but Fry free, the above two and an odd issue from April 1975. Stephen Fry writes that the magazine went on well after his brief involvement and '...plunged into a weird libertarian frenzy of polemical anti-Semitism, gall and bitterness: the title had ever been a hostage to fortune or self-fulfilling prophecy. In its early days it was light-hearted, occasionally amusing, and always self-consciously intellectual.'



It is certainly a very odd mag full of jokes, parodies, reviews of King's Lynn pubs, fake letters from Evelyn Waugh, Brian Aldiss etc. Baron Corvo is at the heart of it and there are genuine letters from intellectual priests like Brocard Sewell (taking issue with Donald Weeks) and the concrete poet Dom Sylvester Houdedard. There are poems and limericks in the New Model Alphabet, a crazed system reducing the alphabet to 13 letters to represent the 13 persons at the Last Supper - A B G H J K O P R S T and numbers 1 AND 5. Its problem seems to be that unless you are reading something you have just written you are unlikely to be able to decipher it. It is attributed to Viscount Luthor and in the issues I have New Model Alphabet writings probably represents less than 10% of the content. Corvo is 20% +--these were the times when Corvomania swept the cities and the fens. There is much whimsy and esoterica. The editorial in the first issue laments the lack of experimental or adventurous writing in current magazines like OZ and I.T. ('stylistic bankruptcy and bop mediocrity') and declares--

"...We will be as idiosyncratic, as paraliterary, as corvological, as quite other than uniform, and as quintessentially informed as we can and please. As usual, we are quite serious. Schopenhauer said: He who writes for fools will find a large audience; we will not underestimate ours!"

There follows a spoof message from Pope Paul VI at Castelgandolfo granting the readers of the magazine a plenary indulgence at the hour of death. Fry's crosswords were damnably difficult and dadaistic. Try this (7 letters) 'the way someone uneducated smokes a cigar nonchalantly.'




The solution is, of course, ABANDON. It was once considered vulgar or common to smoke a cigar with the band on, as it demonstrated how much you had paid for the cigar, an ungentlemanly thing. Hardened gamers might get to that eventually but how about this? 'The Monroe Doctrine has bonus queen involved.' Solution = SARKI (H.H. Munro was Saki, add an R for Queen, duhhh.) Somewhat easier and with the Fry touch is 'Prep-schoolboys' bedroom has insects at one end - and yet they sleep! (7 letters.) Answer below.

Also elementary is 19 across 'Dial for Art' (DALI). He was very fond of anagrams and especially hard hidden ones-- try this - 'A short established rape: he likes a malenky malchick.' The answer, which doesn't exactly come like clockwork, is PEDERAST. The great Baron Corvo is honoured in this clue- 'the great man himself - with a bar on' (5 letters). An early love of wordplay is demonstrated in this marvellous clue - 'Take a sou from something wonderful and you get something metaphysical (7 letters). Answer below. A great writer that Fry was to play in a major motion picture is evoked in this clue ''The lady of the lake made hers famous, anyone keen on the popular Aestheticist' (2,5,5,3) Answer below.

I noted that this magazine 'The Failiure Press' has at its mast on the first issues 'incorporating Rat's Alley' and also freakishly 'incorporating Rat His Alley.' Presumably these were earlier emanations from the King's Lynn Corvines and echo the lines in The Waste Land -'I think we are in rat's alley, / Where the dead men lost their bones'. Eliot, in his turn, seems to have got this from the name of a particular trench in WW1.
I cannot find my old Failiures anymore, the warehouse has subsumed or buried them and I would love to find Rat's Alley but suspect it might be as elusive as Corvo's The attack on St Winefride's well : or Holywell gone mad [1898] but less valuable.

Answers-- Dormant / Marvell /An Oscar Wilde Fan.

Misleading book titles

The polished old oak boards in parts of my home had begun to look scruffy, so I decided to do something about them. I popped into my local Waterstones and saw a new book that seemed perfect. It was called The Care of Wooden Floors and being in a hurry I grabbed it without looking too closely at the dust jacket.. When I got home and opened this book I discovered that the author, someone called Will Wiles, had no professional experience as either a DIY expert or antique restorer, and in fact, was a novelist. His book has nothing whatsoever to do with the respective merits of various types of wood polish, stains and sealants, but was a tale of the misfortunes suffered by someone called Oskar when he entrusted his flat to a friend while he went on holiday. Luckily, I had kept the receipt and now plan to return the book and exchange it for something more useful. But the whole disappointing experience reminded me of other books with misleading titles.

Victoria Beckham, Learning to Fly ( 2001 )

Totally useless if you want to practice for your pilot’s licence. Mrs Beckham, best known for her fashion range and membership of all-girl combo The Spice Girls (itself a misleading title),has written an account of her rise to fame from Goffs Oak model to chanteuse without a single mention of her experiences as a trainee pilot. Exasperating.

Gertrude Stein, How to Write ( Paris 1931) £120+

Anyone wanting to learn the secrets of literary success should avoid this book. For someone who professes an expertise in this field Miss Stein seems woefully unqualified to advise hopeful writers. For instance in her chapter on sentences and paragraphs she tells us that:
‘ A part of a sentence may be a sentence without their meaning. Think of however they went away…’
And furthermore:
‘Every sentence which has a beginning makes it be left more to them…’



Jeanette Winterson, Boating for beginners (1985 ). £30.

Amateur boating enthusiasts in search of tips will gain little practical advice from reading this book, which turns out to be a ‘ comic ‘ story about Noah and the Flood and a romantic novelist named Bunny Mix. Apparently ‘ full of silly things and great fun ‘, according to Winterson, who also wrote Lighthousekeeping, in which a lighthouse figures only tangentially, and The Powerbook, which has nothing whatsoever to do with electrical transmission systems.


Marina Lewycka, A History of the Tractor in Ukrainian (2005).

Wrong from the start. This is published in English. However, it contains little to satisfy those wishing to discover more about the technological developments in agricultural machinery in the Ukraine either before or after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is obvious from the first few pages of a novel about family feuds.



Marian Keyes, Sushi for Beginners, (2003 )

From the title lovers of Japanese cuisine might have expected an introduction to this popular oriental snack. Instead what we get is chick-lit about a London magazine editor called Lisa with a fabulous lifestyle who is assigned to Dublin etc.

Cyril Connolly, The Rock Pool (1936 ) £200 - £300

Worthless for students of littoral environmentalism. As a professional literary critic Mr Connolly is plainly unqualified to write with any scientific authority on such a subject, and though his insights into modern literature may be entertaining, the book as a whole cannot be recommended as a treatise on the natural history of the UK shoreline.

Seamus Heaney, Electric Light ( 2001 )

Alas, this adds nothing to our knowledge of the development of electric illumination from the early nineteenth century onwards. Nor does it offer practical advice to modern students of electrical engineering at HND or undergraduate level. In fact, it consists of nothing but poems.

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (1984 ) £200

Mr Eco has apparently no experience either as a taxonomist or a horticulturalist, which may explain why this medieval fantasy is of little help to those wishing to take up rose-growing as a hobby or career. [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin, as our German colleagues say 'das ist lustig.' You're not wrong-- it has become so bad that when you see a book like 'A Handbook to the Datsun 240Z' you assume it is an earnest novel or possibly a collection of very difficult poetry. I blame James Joyce. There is nothing about Ulysses's 10 year journey back to Ithaca after the Trojan wars in his novel, the whole thing is set in modern day Dublin with the odd trip to Dun Laoghaire. When in 1935 Matisse illustrated 'Ulysses' for the Limited Editions Club he used scenes from the Greek epic for his illustrations. Joyce was not happy that the artist had obviously not read his book and gave up signing after 250 copies. Matisse signed all 1500. The former are worth £15000 and the ones signed only by Matisse a paltry £2500. Bono is said to possess a Matisse only signed Ulysses (pic below) , the double signature being beyond his pocketbook. But that's another story...

This naming of novels as if they are reference manuals has been going on for a few years and is as old hat as books whose titles or subtitles begin 'A Very British...' Another maddening development is the book that looks like a biography (saleable) but turns out to be a novel (almost all unknown contemporary novels are completely and utterly unsaleable)- such a work is Donald Olson's 1993 novel 'Confessions of Aubrey Beardsley'. It even has illustrations. Value in fine condition £0.1 + £2.80 postage and it's a heavy novel so any dealer speculating in it is going to come way with about 70p for their efforts, presuming they paid no money at all for it.

Books Bought 1922

Found on the slightly worn spine of a Kelly's Suffolk 1922 a 'books bought' advertisement by one John Jeffery of 35 High Street, Barnes (London). Kelly's was a sort of yellow pages listing trades and residents by streets and some are much prized by local historians and collectors. The ad reads:

BOOKS BOUGHT. Large or small collections also prints, portraits, engravings etc., Libraries Catalogued and Valued. Any Distance. Write To-day. John Jeffery, 35 High Street, Barnes, S.W. 13.

No phone number so first approaches were made by mail in a leisurely way. I had thought John Jeffery was something to do with George Jeffery of the unforgettable book barrows on London's Farringdon Road - the Jeffery's were trading from about 1880 until the late 1990s. However all Jeffery's were called George and the last street trader was George IV and his son a familiar figure at PBFA bookfairs who also trades online is, I guess, George V.

John Jeffery seems to have flourished in the early 1920s and is only to be found once at Google Books in a 1922 Book Auction Records in a list of dealers. He is next to the legendary dealer Christopher Millard of Abercorn Place St John's Wood, the dealer who set AJA Symons on his quest for Baron Corvo and a pal of the young Anthony Powell to whom he wrote: "A sordid business selling books, but very amusing." I like the sound of Jeffery's Catalogue no 324:

MSS., Association Books, Presentation Copies, etc., including the Original
MS. Volumes of Shelley's Poetical Works, with Notes and a Memoir by Rosetti,
3 vols., 1868-9 £200, ;; Museum Hermeticum, Francofurti, 1678, Arthur
Edward Waite's own copy used for his translation, £65 ; Dee — Relation of
what passed between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits, folio, 1659, ; etc., etc.

Assuming 15 catalogues a year he must have been trading for at least 20 years. There were rich pickings in country houses after the Great War and I like to think that Jeffery's bold speculation in spine advertising paid off and he hit such a rich hoard of books that he was able to retire in luxury shortly thereafter...

This is not a library...revisited

This an edited reposting of an earlier piece with an added bit on online selling. The bookshop mentioned has closed (forever.) So many bookshops have closed that the type of seller depicted here is fast becoming an endangered species...

'Bookselling is easy', someone said 'you buy a book for a dollar and sell it for two.' That's pretty much it + a pencil, rubber, laptop, battered Volvo and a supply of books, boxes and tape. In my experience books are very easy to buy but less easy to sell. Money is the scarce and rare item, so it is difficult to understand why some booksellers make it so hard for customers to buy books from them. Money is what we want. Money to buy more books. However when a bookseller is not shooting himself in the foot, he is usually punching himself in the face.

In the comments field several people mentioned the much hated bookshop on Love Street in San Francisco, where customers were routinely demeaned by petulant staff - a typical scene being a young woman who found a dozen books she wanted to buy and as she made her way through the shelves to find a few more, she was informed by an assistant - 'this is not a library'. She put the books down and left the shop forever (after.)

Dylan Moran said of his great curmudgeonly creation, the bookseller of 'Black Books'- "There is a guy in a Dublin bookshop who provided the image of Bernard Black. He looks like he’s swallowed a cup of sour milk and peed himself at the same time. He has this green bilious expression, years of displeasure have shaped his face. In fact he looks like every other second hand bookshop owner I’ve seen. It seems to go with the job - being miserable....He’s still there now seething in his ash-smudged cockpit, daring somebody to buy a book".

Here are some useful guidelines.

1. Price your books so high that they will only sell to the rich or deranged.

2. Make sure your shop looks as if it is closed so that no one comes in. Poor or sparse lighting can help and a stiff unoiled door is a bonus.

3. Post a lot of notices around the shop 'No Mobile Phones' 'Thieves will be prosecuted' 'No returns' 'All sales Final' etc.,

4. Greet the customer with a glower, a scowl or a look of deep mistrust. If you are feeling generous a frosty 'Good Morning! will suffice.

5. Ask them exactly what they want and if you do not have it be sure they leave before they can look round. If you have a specific book that is requested deny its existence but double the price when the customer leaves.*

6. If they don't buy anything follow them with your eyes to the door and plant an imaginary dagger between their shoulder blades and bid them a joyless and sneering goodbye.

7. Refuse all offers on books with a snort of utter contempt and only give a discount (10% absolute maximum) when explicitly requested by long established booksellers who are spending at least £100.

8. Calculate the discount to the nearest penny even if the amount is many hundred of pounds. Thus £112 becomes £100. 80 not £100. In some cases, say in California, sales tax (8.5%) can be added thus reducing the discount to a more acceptable 1.5%.

9. If you must take credit cards charge an extra 5% to cover expenses. Refuse Paypal and wait 2 weeks for checks to clear.

10. Always close exactly on time no matter how many customers are in the shop or how much they are buying. Close on all holidays including President's Day, Michaelmas and Saint Swithin's day.

11. If a customer puts a book aside give them 24 hours to decide but put the book out 24 hours later to the minute (at a greatly increased price.)

12. If another dealer buys an expensive book have a searching enquiry as to what went wrong; if it was priced by a member of staff fire them immediately.

13. If someone dares to phone you offering you a collection of rare books treat them with great suspicion, if any titles are mentioned dismiss them as common and undesirable. If they insist ask them to bring the books to the shop. If they intimate that the books are of very high quality, but they want nothing or very little for them, pick them up in your Volvo when you are in the area.

NEW ONLINE RULES

14. Do not give the condition of any book unless it is fine, in which case call it 'mint.'

15. Demand extra postage on any book that is a gram overweight and charge heavily for materials and packing time.

16. Ignore all requests for pictures of books, these come from time-wasters. If they persist inform them that the camera is broken.

17. Describe all books where there are less than 20 copies available as 'rare' if less than 10 'very rare.' Any book over 20 years old can be described as 'good for its age.'

18. Pack books unwrapped in a (used) jiffy bag, they have sufficient protection in themselves.

19. Fight any attempt to return a book. A statement that all books must be returned within three days of ordering will suffice.

20. Always state if a book is ex-library but don't forget to call it 'fine' ; most are without the stamps, labels and perforations.

***Driffield used to have a good response to the question 'What are you looking for?' His reply was: 'A thousand pound book priced at less than a hundred.'

Fraudulent memoirs

Anne Hughes, The Diary of a Farmer’s Wife , edited by Suzanne Beedell (1964 ) (£15)

Frequently to be found in the biography/memoirs sections of second hand bookshops and a common item online, this brief ‘ diary’ covers just one year (1796/7) and on the surface does appear to offer valuable insights into the life of a middle-class Georgian farmer’s wife, though she is no Woodforde, Cullwick , or Ann Lister.
But all students of social history should beware. The original diary has never been found and Anne Hughes hasn’t been traced, which raises doubts about the book’s authenticity. The journal was serialised in the Farmer’s Weekly in 1937, with a provenance turning on whether the contributor, one Jeanne Preston, an amateur local historian and playwright, was telling the truth when she maintained that the manuscript was given to her by the family nurse. Twenty seven years later the Journal appeared in book form, edited by one Suzanne Beedell, whose books include such classics as Restoring Junk, Brasses and Brass Rubbing and Menopause: questions and answers.

Most people of sense believe that the lack of both a original source and a traceable author make the book worthless as a historical document. But fans of Mrs Hughes seem unabashed. So devoutly do they believe in the writer and her diary that they have created a website as a tribute, though their plea for further information about author and diary has a slight air of desperation.
So, for the sake of scholarship, can I suggest to National Trust speakers that they bin the testimony of Mrs Hughes and find other recipes for salmagundi, syllabub and frumenty.

James Williams, A Narrative of James Williams (American Anti—Slavery Society 1838) ($947)
When this memoir of a slave’s humbling experiences as a ‘ driver ‘on a cotton plantation in Alabama appeared it was accepted at its face value by most readers. The fact that the respected poet and Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier was involved as a sort of editor/consultant doubtless ensured that its probity would never be questioned. However, within two months of its publication doubts were raised by one newspaper editor as to the factual accuracy of its account of life in Alabama, and these questions never really went away. Today, experts in slave trade history regard Williams’ memoirs as a piece of propaganda and one Shadrach Wilkins has been fingered as the author.

Hesketh Pearson, The Whispering Gallery; being leaves from the diary of an ex-diplomat (1926 ) (£50 +)

After starting off in the literary world at the late age of 34 with Modern Men and Manners (1921), a series of theatrical pen portraits, the ingenious native of Hawford Worcestershire, sometime shipping clerk and actor- manager, published anonymously in 1926 what to all intents and purposes appeared to be a rather outspoken and possibly libellous memoirs of Sir Rendell Robb’s dealings with various high-fliers in politics and public life over a distinguished career. After a review in the Daily Mail strongly challenged the veracity of the account, the publisher John Lane brought legal proceedings against the author on the charge of ‘ obtaining money by false pretences’. In court Pearson admitted that the book was fiction, but denied the charge against him and was acquitted. The publisher nevertheless had already ordered that all copies of the book be withdrawn from sale and pulped, which makes the first edition a rare commodity, though oddly, one dealer on ABE has two nice copies priced at £50 and £100
The text was revised for a second edition, which proved a minor best-seller and is to be found very cheaply. From this unpromising start Pearson was to go on to become one of the most prolific biographers of the twentieth century, easily beating the late Humphrey ‘one book a year‘ Carpenter.

Sister of the Road; an autobiography of ‘ Boxcar ‘ Bertha as told to Dr Ben L Reitman ( 1937 ) ($10)
Actually, totally written by Ben Reitman. ‘ Boxcar’ Bertha Thompson was a fictional creation of this left-wing, sometime hobo, whorehouse physician and champion of birth control, who duped readers into believing that he was the ghost writer to whom Ms Thompson, a lady hobo, had confided her personal experiences. In fact Sisters of the Road was based on the testimonies of many different female hobos interviewed by Reitman over a period of time. The film Boxcar Bertha (1972), the second feature by Martin Scorsese, bears little resemblance to the text of 1937.
[R.M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. Sterling work. Good to see Hesketh Pearson there, I was unaware he had his collar felt. This blog was inspired by the young writer Emma Taylor who sent us her blog from a college website 10 Bestselling Books That Were Later Debunked. Thus encouraged Robin dug out a few earlier examples. Emma's were the modern culprits, the sort of writers who have to make grovelling apologies to Oprah when the truth comes out. We are talking 'A Million Little Pieces' by James Frey, 'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Mortenson and 'Sarah' by JT LeRoy. We may cover some of these later. Few are so far collectable or of value although the very recent fake book (plagiarism) Quentin Rowan's debut thriller 'Assassin of Secrets' seems to have some value already...

Claude Houghton. I am Jonathan Scrivener (1930)

Claude Houghton. I AM JONATHAN SCRIVENER. Thornton Butterworth, London, 1930.

Current Selling Prices
$150-$250 /£100-£160

I first heard of this book when we were buying a wagon-load of (mostly) review books from the British actor and writer Simon Callow. He seems to be using a different dealer now, probably a friend or relation, possibly a dealer more generous than us, although that seems unlikely…The name of the novelist and poet Claude Houghton came up in literary banter and SC mentioned that Houghton's novel I am Jonathan Scrivener had been an influence on Orson Welles in the plotting and style of Citizen Kane - the 'prismatic approach.' Having written a fat bio of Welles his word has some weight and the web bears out this idea with several articles on the matter (some require money to read.) Certainly when I read the book I could see his point, although AJA Symons Quest for Corvo could also be seen in this light. The plot unfolds thus:

One James Wrexham, an impoverished but well-educated Englishman past his first youth answers an advertisement in the London Times and becomes secretary to the mysterious, invisible Jonathan Scrivener.
He never sees his employer, who goes abroad after hiring him (solely on the strength of his letter of application.) Wrexham’s only duties are to live in Scrivener’s London flat, catalogue his library, receive his friends, write occasional reports to his absent employer. One by one Scrivener’s friends turn up in search of him, get acquainted with Wrexham, tell him what they think of Scrivener. Each description is different…who exactly is Jonathan Scrivener?

OK no-one utters the word 'Rosebud' but it is credible as an input for the 'greatest film ever'. The book was a best- seller in its day, especially in USA and the Penguin paperback sold 100,000 copies. ABE has 6 Penguins from £5 to £25 the latter price for a fine copy in a near fine d/w. Penguin jackets often turbo charge prices….The hardback British first can go for £160 fine in jacket and the Simon and Schuster first USA for a little less, although some patient dealers want $200+ for copies sans jacket.

Henry Miller wrote in The Books in My Life that 'it would have made a wonderful movie' and there is even speculation that Godot came out of it, possibly Sam B read it, there was even a French edition Je suis Jonathan Scrivener. The IMDB database shows that it was filmed for TV in 1952 in the Studio One in Hollywood series. The French edition of 1954 has an intro by Henry Miller.

There are some quotable lines in the book:

"Most of us commit suicide, but the fact is only recognized if we blow our brains out.”

“I’ve met a number of people who had endured agonies in their determination not to suffer.”

“To solve a problem, you must have all the data or none.”

At the recent auction of some of Peter Howard's stock in Los Angeles I managed to acquire the typed/ corrected manuscript of the book. I look forward to cataloguing it when it arrives back in the UK. It came with the MS of his novel The Riddle of Helena and the cataloguer records that Claude Houghton (1889-1961) 'enjoyed success as a writer of metaphysical thrillers.' Another cataloguer notes that he was admired by P G Wodehouse and Hugh Walpole. Doubleday, his American publisher described him as 'this fascinating romantic mystic...who insists that there are more spiritual worlds than this one in which we live and that it is man's chief business to discover his relations to these worlds."

Fittingly, four of his novels are listed by E. F. Bleiler in his Checklist of Science Fiction and Supernatural Fiction under such categories as 'mental aberration' 'after death experiences 'visitors from other worlds,times' and 'Supermen.' All the Bleiler titles are obtainable, often signed, at fairly reasonable prices. In his day he was compared to D.H. Lawrence and Emily Bronte, because like both of them he had made a decisive break with the 'novel of manners.' He now belongs in the honourable category of forgotten or even neglected writers but in the 'long tail' of consumer demand his books are likely to be always saleable.

Yoko Ono / Grapefruit

Yoko Ono. GRAPEFRUIT. ( Tokyo, Wunternaum Press 1964)
Current Selling Price
$9000 /£6000

Well-heeled collectors of early Beatles memorabilia ( signed programmes, posters, concert tickets, song lyrics written on napkins etc etc ) may not thank you for offering them a first of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, signed or otherwise, at a hefty price. Many fans still blame Ono for contributing to the splitting of the Fab Four and for taking John in a direction that would ultimately lead to his violent death.

Such narrow-mindedness seems absurd when we think of what Lennon achieved while with Ono. As for the woman herself, one art historian has called her ‘ one of the most daring , innovative and eccentric artist-performers of her time’.

Oko was a leading figure with the Fluxus art movement, which originated in New York City in the early sixties and eventually spread to Japan. Fluxus, according to one critic, ‘ encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion ‘. John Cage was an early member of the movement and ‘do-it-yourself ’ music was often performed. As well as a performer, Ono sees herself as a musician and the instructions she and others issued for enacting the art work they called an ‘ event’ was called an ‘event score’. In Grapefruit she collects some of ‘ pieces’ ( such as ‘Clock Piece’ and ‘Laundry Piece ‘) that she enacted in galleries and concert halls, mainly in the USA. Here are some of the pieces/scores included in Grapefruit:


Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden to
Put them in.

Let people copy or photograph your paintings.
Destroy the originals.

Think that snow is falling. Think that snow is falling
Everywhere all the time. When you talk with a person think
Snow is falling between you and the person.
Stop conversing when you think the person is covered by snow.


One can see the influence of Japanese graphic art, the art of haiku and Zen in such ‘instructions ‘.

As you might expect, Grapefruit is as minimal in appearance as a piece of Raku pottery. In fact, from the outside it looks like nothing more than an artist’s sketchbook, square in shape and covered with a dull light brown or cream wrapper. Some way down on the left of the front cover Ono ( a fan of calligraphy ) has inscribed in black ink the single word Grapefruit. Inside, the instructions are printed in black ink using a number of subtly different typefaces.
There are conflicting accounts regarding the first meeting of John and Yoko, but it is generally accepted that the year was 1966, that soon afterwards Yoko sent John a signed copy of Grapefruit, and that the Beatle was intrigued by both book and artist. The rest is history.

The pre-publication price of Grapefruit was a mere $3; post publication it doubled. It is not known exactly how many of the edition of 500 were sold. I can’t imagine that Ono kept a list of buyers. It has been said that no copy has appeared at auction for thirty-five years and that this is because most remain with Japanese art collectors, who are hanging on to their copies. However, a well known London dealer has a nice copy for sale at £12,000, and there must be other Grapefruits circulating in the UK, perhaps bought in the era of Flower Power and forgotten about. One of these was acquired by a friend of mine, who now wishes to sell it (see me for details) at a price far below the £12,000 cited. A much expanded trade edition was published by Schuster and Peter Owen in 1970 and a year later Sphere brought out their own edition. These later copies range in price from $20 – $40, though one dealer wants a very un-Zen like £2,250 for one signed by both Yoko and John. [R.M. Healey}



Many thanks Robin. Hope that one finds a buyer-- it certainly should. I remember Yoko as an avant-garde artist before John loomed so large...She used to get people to cut bits off her clothes with scissors at the Round House. Fluxus surely. I always heard that they met at the Indica Gallery in Southampton Row, probably the most interesting thing to happen in that street since Maclaren-Ross moved out of the Bonnington. Meanwhile £2250 for a copy of the UK ed signed by Yoko and John may not be unbuyable - especially less 20 % and with 3 post dated cheques stretching into 2013. A better investment than Groupon shares.

Btw the plain white copy above is the true 1964 first, the title being always handwritten on the cover by Yoko. The b/w one is the USA first, John and Yoko are holding the UK first. Gorrit?

Andre Raffalovich

In a box of pamphlets and booklets at the California Book Fair recently I found a catalogue by the legendary Anthony D'Offay. It appears to date from 1961 and was sent from an address in Jamaica Street, Edinburgh. D'Offay, 21 at the time, was one of the great post war booksellers and probably the richest although most of his money was made in modern art. Books probably provided the seed capital for a business fortune large enough to enable him to generously donate £125 million worth of art to the nation in 2008. His first great coup was to locate and buy much of the book and manuscript collections of the John Gray and his lifelong companion Andre Raffalovich.

Both poets were Roman Catholic converts, both gay and very much creatures of the 1890s--the great English decadence. Also their work is seriously collected and quite valuable - a completist collection of their published books in decent condition would leave little change from $60,000, with Raffalovich using up most of one's funds. In D'Offay's catalogue he has 3 works by Raffalovich. Roses of Shadow a short play which AOD suggests lampoons Wilde with lines such as 'Even my red carnation is getting faded... I wish red flowers never died. I love red I always wear red: the red flower of a passionate life.' It was privately published in 1895 in a very small edition. D'Offay needed 5 guineas for a fine copy, a copy has been sitting on ABE for some while at a fairly challenging £4000 - not as nice as the 1961 copy but a presentation copy from Raffalovich to film star Ernest Thesiger. It is by no means Raffalovich's most valuable book.

Raffalovich, who was quite wealthy, had 2 bookplates one by Eric Gill (top) and one by Austin Osman Spare (one of his best) they always enhance the value of any books they are found in... [to be continued]

Three of the rarest twentieth century books on magic...

Guy Jarrett. Jarrett Magic and Stagecraft ( Written, printed and bound by the author 1936) Current selling price $4,000 +

Guy Jarrett was the magician’s magician. An astonishingly accomplished technical magician and inventor, he was extremely scathing about the deficiencies of his fellow illusionists and apparently difficult to work with. In 1936 he decided to disclose the secrets of his inventions in a book that he would print and bind himself. Using foundry type and a simple printing machine he went about his task, which involved actually writing the book as he set the type for each page, which he printed one at a time. This was not unlike the John Bull method of printing, though with metal rather than with rubber type. As each page was printed Jarrett would remove the type and reassemble it for the next page. The book contained 106 pages and, according to the author, 582,489 characters. It took Jarrett a year to complete this awesome project ( he claimed to have printed 400 copies ) after which he allowed himself a little self-congratulation on the last page:

‘This is a hell of a good book. I just read it. I invented the tricks, built the tricks, made the drawings, set the type, printed the book, and will bind the book. All over and out ‘

Jarrett was as good as his word. He did indeed bind his book in blue cloth—very badly, according to one critic—and on the cover of it in silver lettering he stamped the single word ‘ JARRETT ‘. He priced the book at an amazingly cheap $5, but it didn’t sell. He then advertised that he would increase the price by one dollar a month until it reached $10, at which point he would throw away all the unsold copies. Luckily, he didn’t carry out this threat, but no-one really knows how many copies of Jarrett Magic and Stagecraft have survived. Because of the lack of interest from magicians it is likely that the author bound only around 70 or 80 copies from the sheets. There is evidence that he gave away copies to magicians he liked. As a result, and perhaps because of its poor binding, the book is now exceedingly rare and much sought after by the wealthier professional magicians. Historian Jim Steinmeyer, who in 1981 reprinted it with his own comments as The Complete Jarrett, calls it one of the most important books on illusion ever published.


Wilf Huggins (ed), The Midget Magician ( Published by the author at 171, Argyle Avenue, Hounslow, Middlesex, January 1951 – March 1960 ) Current selling price $8,000+

This was a magazine of truly Lilliputian proportions, each volume being around half the size of a pocket diary, and like Auden’s famous Poems of 1928, hand printed on an Ardana press. Essentially a miscellany of articles on the history of magic, it was published by subscription by magician Wilf Huggins in an edition of 50 for each of its 38 issues. Probably only 30 complete sets have survived, some of which are in academic libraries. The Library of the Magic Circle, for instance, holds one set in limp leather. In 2000 a fan tried to track down the current owners of complete sets and discovered that at least 17 sets were unaccounted for. Individual issues may still in circulation, though the tiny dimensions of each copy would militate against many surviving. Like Jarrett, The Midget Magician is a legendary rarity among collectors, and is probably on more ‘ wants lists ‘ than any other magic books.

S. W. Erdnase, Artifice, Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table ( Published by the author, 1902). Current selling price £1,000 +. Later reprints $300 +

The first book to describe in great detail all the gambling moves in cards, and as such is greatly sought after by card magicians throughout the world. Mystery, however surrounds the identity of the author. Obviously, S. W. Erdnase is an anagram and a number of writers have proposed theories. The most substantial book ( 420 pages ) on the subject is The Man who was Erdnase by Bart Waley with Martin Gardner and Jeff Busby, who argue that the mystery figure was an American con man, gambler and murderer called Milton Franklin Andrews . All later issues bear the date 1902, but only the first edition was bound in green cloth. [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks. Too busy to post anything myself and even found it hard to find suitable, clear images-- the top photo is of a late reprint of Erdnasse's fabulous work here got up like a bible and said to be almost as useful as the great book. The other photo ( Jarrett) seems to be from a catalogue of a forthcoming sale where no doubt the book will make the right price...Rock on Robin, will get back to scribbling when these book fairs are behind me...

‘Only one copy known….’ Well… perhaps two.

Arthur Machen, Eleusinia (Joseph Jones, Hereford 1881). One copy known. $15,000


Privately printed by Joseph Jones of Hereford when Machen was just 18, and not long out of Hereford Grammar School, this was a poem of teenage ecstasy by the Welsh wizard of fantasy. According to his biographer John Gawsworth, Machen received only six copies of his poem from the printer, who kept the remainder for himself over a payment dispute. Some say only one copy is known to exist; other say two. Peter Vincent’s story, ‘Completion’, recounts the experiences of one bibliomaniac’s quest to secure a copy of Eleusinia.


Robert Frost, Twilight( Laurence, Mass. 1894)

Two copies made; one was said to have been destroyed by the author. $75,000 (Ahearne 2000). When it fetched $3,000 in 1949 this was the highest price paid for a contemporary American author. This surviving copy ended up in an American library.
Apparently, the man who became one of America’s greatest poets was so unsure of his talent that he only paid for two copies of this debut volume of six poems, one of which was meant for his fiancée. A re-reading of these callow effusions may be the reason why he later destroyed one copy. Pray that more were printed.



John Bunyan, A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rhimes for Children (London, N. Ponder, 1686). Two known copies. £20,000+.

The BL claims to have one of the two known. Published posthumously, this illustrated anthology of Christian homilies, or meditations, on ‘74 things’ was deemed ‘lost‘ to bibliographers until the copy that had been bought in the year of its printing by Narcissus Luttrell for 6d turned up at a London bookshop c 1882. This in turn was bought for 40 guineas by an American collector who soon afterwards let it go to the British Museum Library. The Library of California at Santa Barbara has the other known copy. Why there are so few copies is a bit of a mystery, but the answer may lie in the fact that little children tend to tear up books, especially if they contain pictures.

Robert Burns, The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799).Two known copies. £20,000 +

One copy of this collection of extremely bawdy songs based on examples found among Burns’ papers at his death in 1795 is owned by the University of South Carolina. It is not known how many of these were composed by the Bard himself, and for this reason some Burns enthusiasts are reluctant to admit the collection into the canon. Another reason why only two copies are known may have something to do with British Puritanism--- many of the songs feature human genitalia.

John R. Ridge, The Life and Adventures of Joaquim Murieta (1854). $15,000 Only 2 copies known.

One is at Yale, the other is in a private collection. Ridge, or ‘ Yellow Bird ‘ has been claimed as the ‘ first Native American novelist ‘ and his book ‘ the first Californian novel ‘. Murrieta (note alternative spelling) was a bloodthirsty Mexican bandit who terrorised California in its formative years. He was killed at the age of 21 and Ridge somewhat romanticises his life.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Poems (c1903) pp29. Two known copies. $20,000+

Montgomery (1874 – 1942) was, of course, the author of the classic Anne of Green Gables (1908 ), a first of which can fetch around $10,000 in decent condition. The poems, published when Montgomery was 27, are 32 in number and most are printed on one side of the paper only, which suggests that some sort of crude printing devise was used . The librarian at the Canadian library that owns a copy, speculates that the author probably gave a ‘very limited ‘number of copies to friends around Christmas 1903. How many is ‘very limited ‘? Hope that Miss Montgomery had plenty of friends if you want to secure a copy. You won’t find the title listed in Ahearne (2000), so one can only hazard an educated guess at its value.

To be continued….

[R. M. Healey ]


Many thanks Robin. Awesome and inspiring. Will start searching right away. The sort of books that show up at a church jumble sale once in a blue moon...

Second hand bookshop window display

I am fortunate to live near a good second hand bookshop Reed Books 2 on the High Street in Aldeburgh on the Suffolk Coast of the sceptered isle. Idyllic but a bit too close to the mighty Sizewell Nuclear Power station. Time and again this shop gets annoyingly good books some of which end up on the web, but many go out in the shop and I occasionally buy some with a view to making money. Reed Books 1 was across the way and closed a couple of years ago - it was run by book enthusiast and party hound Julius Reed kinsman of "wild thing" actor Oliver Reed. Julius at one point had a rave in his bookshop which attracted a younger crowd but drew some disapproval from the council. He has moved into antiques and his cohort Robin Summers has taken over the mantle and now runs and owns Reed Books 2.

A retired TV actor not unknown to the IMDB database Robin has a very good eye and has done at least 3 themed window displays. My photo above shows his latest-- carefully chosen faces staring out of the window. He also had a great window entirely full of Britain in Pictures - apparently when shown like this en masse they sell well. He also had a window display of Teach Yourself books, covered in an earlier posting. The subject of displays in bookshop windows is not without interest-- very few shops pay a lot of attention to staging. Robin consciously sets aside books for his window and it pays off.



In a display in his shop window of books with bizarre or unfortunate titles I picked up a Scouts in Bondage (in dust wrapper) for £20. It is rare thus and the profit might pay for one night in a half decent London hotel, and possibly a meal - but I am not selling at present.. If any readers have photos of thematic bookshop displays please send them in. We are doing a sports window for the London Olympics this July... slightly predictable but almost obligatory.

Vivian Nicholson. Spend, Spend, Spend...

Vivian Nicholson & Stephen Smith. SPEND, SPEND, SPEND. Jonathan Cape, London 1977.

Current Selling Prices
£50-£100

A book that looks like nothing...In 1961 Vivian ('Viv') Nicholson won £152,000 on the football pools when she correctly predicted 8 draws. She announced to the press that she was going to "spend, spend, spend". The phrase has entered the language, a recent £8 million pound lottery winner also said she intended to 'spend,spend, spend.' Within 3 years the wild Viv had spent the lot (the equivalent of £3 million nowadays). She had been a tabloid sensation, she recorded a single ('Spend, Spend, Spend') appeared in a strip club dancing to 'Hey Big Spender' and was the subject of a musical and TV play by the late Jack Rosenthal. Rosenthal's play was based on this book of taped interviews with Viv by ghostwriter Stephen Smith.


Rosenthal was a colleague of the PR man who, on behalf of Littlewoods Pools, persuaded Nicholson to allow publicity for her pools win. He wrote in his autobiography: "From that day on, I followed her wild, seemingly stupid adventures in the papers - and believed every snide, snooty, biased word the relentless publicity said. All adding up to one word - that she was a cow." Reading the book caused Rosenthal to reassess his attitude and he "became a fan" eager to put across an explanation of her behaviour.



The 1978 musical was successful, although I tend to agree with the acerbic critic Martin Cropper who stated that in his opinion all musicals were bad. It's a botched art form, although a million busloads of punters would disagree. Certainly the lyrics are unpromising:

'8 draws, you've got them all, 8 draws,
Love was a bitch, but now you're rich,
She's bloody Santa Claus.'

As a kind of outrageous pre-Punk she was a natural hero for that anarchic era. Her photograph later appeared on the cover of The Smiths' 1984 single "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and "Barbarism Begins At Home". In 2012 she may be slightly neglected but the book still commands fancy prices with Angela Carter's copy at £150, and a copy with two pages missing (but supplied in xerox) at a chancer's £75. The paperback version which I just picked up for 20p (reduced from 35p) has to be worth £20+ and has a better cover than the hardback. The book is as the blurb says "...a totally unselfconscious self - portrait, a ripping good tale, fast cars, booze, 'sexual happenings', deaths...you name it Viv can talk about it as if it were the most natural thing in the world." The style is 'Educating Rita' before her Michael Caine makeover. The book ends- 'I still have hopes of making me million...pinning me hopes on the rock opera version, I am.'

Same name, different game….2

I ‘ve now discovered that not only does my namesake, the elderly woolly jumper-admiring New Zealand poet, have at least one fan in the world (according to the bookride comments box), but also there are many copies on ABE of two books by yet another Robin Healey.

This upstart, it would seem, is a world expert on Italian literature, whose Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation and Twentieth century Italian Literature in translation: an annotated bibliography, 1927 - 1997 appear to have created quite a stir in the academy, judging by the reviews. I was particularly delighted to read that ‘ If anything, Healey is much too modest about his own accomplishments ‘.

Along with the disadvantages of having a nominal doppelganger in the literary stakes, come some obvious advantages. Online Googlers will make gratifying assumptions in your favour regarding books bearing your name, including details relating to your age, education and background. Which is nice. Meanwhile, here are some further names to conjure with.


Geoffrey Archer, Dark Angel, Skydancer, Scorpion Trail, etc etc etc.

Matthew Arnold, Stakeholder negotiations: Exercises in sustainable development, 1995.

Jane Austin, Jump Start
The Overwrought Urn (Graphic Originals)

James Baldwin, Whole Earth Ecology, an environmental tool-kit.

John A. Brain, An Evening with Thomas Talfourd , 1889.

John F. Brain, The Man who created God.

Robert Bridges, Invitation to Fly Flight Manouevres Manual for Private Pilots, 1983.

Frank Bruno, Riggermortis, 1966

Roy Campbell, Measuring the Sales and Profit Results of Advertising

Edward Carpenter, The Service of a Parson: why is he there and what he does.

Steven Crane, The personal Income Tax Savings Handbook

Steven A. Crane, Ashamed of Joseph: Mormon Foundations Crumble.
Is Mormonism now Christian ?



Raymond Chandler, All that Glitters, the crime and the cover-up. (Chandler was the lawyer uncle of the boy at the heart of the Michael Jackson scandal ).

Leonard Cohen, Choosing to work: an action-oriented job-finding book, 1979.

Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: the ‘ Bloody 100th ‘ Bomb Group of the eighth US Air Force in action over Europe in World War II.

John Dunne, Reasons of the Heart

William C. Falkner, The Siege of Monteray

Iain Fleming, Accounting for Business management, 1997.

Robert Frost, Victorian and Edwardian Staffordshire from old Photographs, 1977.

Robert Frost, All for Strings ( comprehensive string method ), 1986

John G. Fuller, Prescriptions for Better Home Video Movies

Alan Ginsburg, American and British Regional Export Determinants, 1969

William E. Hague, Remodel, don’t move: how to change your home to fit your lifestyle. New Complete Basic Book of Home Decoration, 1982.

Ian Hamilton, Resources and Industry (OUP)

Dennis Healy, The Illustrated Rules of Baseball, 1995.

Geoffrey Hill, Illuminating Shadows: the mythic power of film, 1992

Susan Hill, Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel: meet the ‘Munks.
Spider-Man: Spider man versus Electro.

David Hulme, Will Christ Return ?, 1990.

Lee Hunt, The Vampire of New York

M. R. James, Successful Bowhunting

John Keates, Understanding maps, 1996

John Locke, Isometric perspective designs and how to create them

Mary McCarthy, Making Books by hand

Margaret Mitchell, Mealtime Magic Cookbook.

Henry Miller, California Missions: the earliest series of views made in 1856

Keith Richards, Tender mercies: inside the world of a child-abuse investigator, 1991

Walter Scott, Lung Cancer: a guide to diagnosis and treatment, 2002.




Ian Sinclair, Photographic Guide to Birds of Southern Africa.

Adam Smith, Supermoney, 1972.

John Wain, Wildtrack, a poem.

Harold K Wilson, Grain Crops, 1955

W. B. Yates, Diaspora .



[R.M.Healey]

Many thanks Robin. Got a feeling that John Wain (angry young man) actually wrote 'Wildtrack', but not John Wayne the cowboy actor. As for 'Adam Smith' I guess that was a sort of 'nom de blague' (real name Hiram Potts or something.) The odd thing is when a well known writer also wrote a very minor book as well. Robert Aickman the highly rated, valuable and collected writer of ghost stories and fantasy was also the was founder and Vice-President of the Inland Waterways Association. He wrote 'Know Your Waterways. Holidays on Inland Waterways' which is worth £10 as opposed to £500 or more for some of his fiction. One wonders whether any of the above writers are one and the same with their famous namesakes -- could Frank Bruno have knocked out a forensic thriller ('Riggermortis') between bouts in the ring or Geoffrey Hill, the great poet, also be an expert on cinema and myth... ?