To Kill a Mockingbird. by Harper Lee.

Harper Lee. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Lippincott, Philadelphia, USA. 1960.

Current Selling Prices
$12000-$15000 £7500-£9000

MODERN FIRST EDITION.
Up there with the great modern American novels in esteem and price. Won the Pulitzer, the movie won 3 Oscars. She is at the opposite spectrum to your reclusive Pynchons and Salingers - signed copies abound, especially of reprints and anniversary editions. The jacket has points on it, ideally you want the price intact but definitely a Jonathan Daniels blurb/ quote on the flap and a credit (on the rear) to Truman Capote for his photo of young Harper Lee. Capote was a childhood friend, he dedicated 'In Cold Blood to Her.' The character Dill in Mockingbird is based on him. Capote's copy inscribed to him would be way cool, to say the least.

VALUE? A book traded almost to death on ebay but possibly still quite well 'underpinned' - i.e. having a large amount of collectors and speculators. Properly collectable copies are quite difficult, the unlaminated jacket doesn't last well (quite a few are restored) it tends to get rubbed and and frayed, many of the estimated 5000 printed went to libraries and, damn it, people read the book. Condition has to be taken down a notch, as fine copies are not really feasible; even the big money copies were not fine. In terrestrial auctions nice copies have made as much as $15K, and at the 2001 Falktoft sale a sporting $32000 (unsigned.) 2001 was, however, an annus mirabilis for high spot mod firsts. Dot com days. It remains to be seen how long it will be until such prices are achieved again. Inscribed to no one special it has made $40K.

An interesting copy turned up at Swann in 2005 signed by Harper Lee and with a signed letter from her dated October 2004 advising the owner to sell it at Swann! It made $19K. Prices on the internet are generally significantly lower than these records, possibly too many copies have been flushed out by these heady prices and the book has become something of a cliché on ebay. That being said no one is presently possessed of a fab copy.

STOP PRESS. The above entry was written in January 2007. Not much has changed since then --it keeps turning up - there is a signed copy described as fine/fine on ABE at $40K -'...it has a bit of top edge foxing and a slight spine lean; near fine in a near fine, unrestored dust jacket with a little edge rubbing.' The seller rightly makes a virtue of its being unrestored; there is a very nice restored one (new endpapers too) from one of the globe's most expensive modfirst dealers at $12000. The much liked dealer known as 'Flatsigned' has 6 copies over $1000- all, except the Taiwanese first, signed by the great writer. These include a reasonable signed copy in a second state jacket at $15000 described thus "This remarkeable item is truly a treasure for a lifetime...' Something of a curiosity is the fact that the signature is '... on new restored end-papers...' Sophisticated stuff.

Most intriguing is a French dealer called Whopper Books with what looks like a pretty nice copy descibed thus -- '... tres bon etat exceptionnel exemplaire du premier tirage du livre le plus célèbre des états unis ! limité à 5,000 pour l'édition de novembre 1960, depuis plus de 50,000,000 ont été imprimé, pour collectionneur avertit représente également un excellent placement. moyen format.' The picture shows a copy in near fine jacket. Unless he is telling whoppers, or it's a later state, at $9,329.56 it's a good buy for a collector. [ W/Q **** ]

Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged.

Ayn Rand was her Ellis Island name, the Rand taken from the make of her typewriter. She prefigures our own Maggie Thatcher in her belief that there was no such thing as society. In the early 30s she wrote screenpplays in Hollywood, the kind of thing it would be pleasing to turn up unnoticed somewhere. Among her fans are Rush Limbaugh, Michael Caine, Alan Greenspan and the metal group Rush. She has shifted 30 million books...

Ayn Rand. ATLAS SHRUGGED. Random House, NY 1957.

Current Selling Prices
$1200-$2000 / £600-£1000

NOVEL / POLITICS / PHILOSOPHY
Ayn Rand had original wanted to call it 'On Strike' but her husband came up with 'Atlas Shrugged', a brilliant title. Not absolutely sure what it means. Has sold over 6 million copies and changed lives. Novel of ideas. Very pro capitalism. Often voted greatest novel of the 20th Century in USA, occasionally it's 'The Hobbit' and sometimes 'Ulysses.' Book opens 'Who is John Galt?" and it takes 650 pages before the reader gets the glimmer of an answer. The phrase has entered the language as an expression of puzzlement, apprehension or mock despair. Not quite as memorable as 'Call me Ishmael' but a darn good opening line. 2008 is said to the date of the release of the movie. A film 'The Passion of Ayn Rand' starring Helen Mirren gives a slightly chilling portrait of her. Peter Fonda plays her long suffering spouse.


VALUE? A very decent first wearing jacket can be had for less than $1800. Faultless copies can be found at about twice this although oddly a copy described as '...Very fine copy in a fine plus first issue jacket...' is not faultless but rubbed at corners. I guess 'very fine' is better than 'fine plus' but both are a few degrees short of very fine plus. This sort of grading is a little dubious but you tend to see it around Rand and also SF highspots. Her prices are not going down, despite the Rush / Rush endorsement, if anthing they are keeping pace with inflation.



Because of its size (1168 pages) the jacket is often creased or torn. Fat books tend to shrug off their jackets. Signed copies go for more but are not impossibly rare and many signatures are in reprints or in the 2000 signed copies of the 1967 anniversary edition. Patient buyers can find copies of the 1967 edition at ebay for sober prices. Do not exchange a new Jaguar for one. [ W/Q *** ]

J. D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye.

There are no rules in book collecting - but before the advent of the net there was a sort of consensus that in literature you wanted first editions. Second editions could be tolerated in the case of world stars like Shakespeare, Joyce or Dante but otherwise a second edition was merely a reprint and OK for reading but not collecting. Not so any more. In the case of today's book some, to my mind, unfortunate person just paid $300 on ebay for a third edition 'Catcher' in a facsimile jacket. Kind of book you might have left on the shelf at $10 when you saw that the jacket was from a commemorative facsimile edition and the book was basically a reprint. All is changed, changed utterly... my advice is do what thou will, but proper firsts are going to be easier to shift if and when you sell...

J. D. Salinger. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. Litttle Brown & Co.,Boston, 1951.

Current Selling Prices
£4000+ / $8500+

MODERN FIRST EDITION / FICTION / CULT CLASSIC
Still avidly read even by youths of the IM generation. Teen angst, teenage wasteland etc., Considered obscene in its time and given a sinister vibe by its association with psychotic assassin Mark Chapman. Hard to tell what that did for the reputation of the book apart from make it even more famous. A reclusive and litigious author, but signed material does occasionally creep out including a questionnaire he filled in for a travel agent after a continental holiday (appears to have sold for $20K+.) Dealers selling letters and notes from him have learned not to quote them unless they want a lot of grief from his lawyers. The main way of telling if you have the proper first is the Lotte Jacobi photo on the rear (missing in later editions) + no 'Book of the Month Club' slug on front inner flap. The 'Book of the Month Club' issue can, however make awesome sums on ebay. Backpacker classic, the ultimate cult novel but watch out for phony jackets.

VALUE? Not uncommon but not exactly a sleeper so always expensive. There is the tale of the East Coast bookseller in the 1980s who found a box full of the proper firsts - these have long been absorbed by the market. The kind of book bought by stars such as Pitt and Depp for their panelled book dens. Hard to find a nice one with d/w unclipped and with the $3.00 price for much less than $8K. Limpid copies way more. In auction the book has had spectacular and possibly unreproduceable results. Nice copies of the US first were making $100 in the 70s and a fine copy made $1500 as recently as 1992, and a 'superb copy' $15000 in 2003. The Neville copy made $25K signed in 2004. All part of an increasing trend for buying ( and investing in) cult classics: if you are going to spend this kind of money you might as well have something everybody has heard of.


It may have topped out, although the market hasn't been tested recently by another superb example. 2 copies turned up in auction in 2006 both with slight wear, they made $3000 and $5250 (' d/j with tears & chips to edges & split to lower front joint - bdg with some rubbing'.) Inscribed copies are not as rare as they were - anything 'flatsigned' (ie signed but without inscription) is best avoided without ironclad provenance. There are several for sale with clipped signatues mounted in them, always faintly tacky and faintly unconvincing. Watch out for facsimile jackets. Likewise restored jackets unless at hard to resist prices. There is a chap online at present selling the first state jacket without the book for $7500. One day it will marry.

Illustrated below is the UK first edition with a memorable jacket by the highly rated British illustrator Fritz Wegner. It is considered more attractive than the US jacket, the young man pictured looking oddly contemporary. It can sell for over a £1000 in sharp condition ( it made $3000 in a freak result at Christies NY 2002- a reasonable copy made $525 last year at Auction Explorer.



In 2005 at a glittering champagne fueled sale in NY a copy of the UK first made a staggering $23000 ( '... in a folding case by the Dragonfly Bindery of George & Patricia Sargent - rubbed, chipped & creased - Drapkin copy - Christie's New York, June 29, 2005, lot 328'.) One can only imagine the exquisite splendours of these boxes and indeed they added to the value of other books contained in them. Auction results, however, can be fatally 'site specific'. [ W/Q **** ]

Casino Royale (1953) Ian Fleming.

A highspot hopefully given a slight boost by the new movie - the book is one of the flashiest of modern firsts. For the moment it is marking time a little in financial terms, but it is always readily saleable if you don't push for the final, ultimate 'end user' price...

Ian Fleming. CASINO ROYALE.Cape, London 1953


MODERN FIRST EDITION / ESPIONAGE
Stunning debut novel by posh English writer harking back to Edwardians such as Raffles and Bulldog Drummond but with Aston Martins, added sadism, Vodka, temptresses and fancy handmade ciggies. In 1967 it was made into a bloody awful comedy caper film -- a kind of spoof with Peter Sellers, David Niven and Woody Allen as Bond and Orson Welles as Le Chiffre also starring Deborah Kerr, William
Holden, Ursula Andress, Daliah Lavi, John Huston and Charles Boyer, Jean Paul Belmondo. Recently a new movie appeared with handsome Daniel Craig well reviewed and noted for giving back Bond a sense of danger, something lacking from the Brosnan efforts. Fleming always insisted that Bond looked like Hoagy Carmichael and must have been slightly bemused by Sean Connery.

Current Prices £10000 - £15000 /$18000 - $28000

VALUE? (12/06) Not scarce (4728 printed) but difficult to find in superior condition and valuable thus. Trouble is that people read the book and it had no significant value for the first 30 years of it's life so it is hardly ever fine. Alan Ross, a pal of Fleming, told me that his copy (signed to him) was borrowed by someone who wanted to read it and he forgot to ask for it back. That copy would now be worth more than a new Jaguar. It is always best to avoid 'flatsigned' copies ( a regrettable term invented by Stephen King on an off day to describe a book that is merely signed by the author 'directly on the page, and not on a bookplate' and now in use all over the less challenging parts of the infobahn ). Fleming, as a rule, added a few words to his inscriptions and forgers cannot usually risk more than just doing the name tout court.

An unsigned copy described as fine made a little over $33000 in a high profile (Falktoft) sale 2002. The first copy mentioned in auction records made £420 in 1982 to Richard Booth, of Hay -on Wye. STOP PRESS. MAY 2007. I now think this must have been a buyer who was around the rooms at that time called Robert Booth, a Nineties collector, but with a roving eye for fancy books. The King of Hay has never, to my knowledge, been seen at a London auction.

The price on 'Casino Royale' is discernibly levelling off despite the very good movie. The 2 copies that turned up in 2006 at terrestrial auctions, both wearing slightly worn jackets, made £3000 (Christies) and £6000 (Sothebys.) Prices such as for the Falktoft one ($33K) would now be reserved for resonant presentations and very, very fresh copies. The highest one on the web at present is with an unkown dealer at £15K said to be fine apart from a biro inscription. On ebay it would probably make $15K, when it comes to modern firsts the punters there tend to be bottom feeders. The big money fights are for incunabula, Bibles and presidential autographs. [ W/Q ** ]

The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald.1925.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. THE GREAT GATSBY. Scribner's, NY 1925

Current Selling Prices
$120000-$180000 / £55000-£95000



MODERN FIRST EDITION
The summum bonum of mod firsts, in its famous jacket fabulously valuable - outranking Joyce, Hem, Faulkner, Beckett and even JK Rowling. A great work that ,as they say, tapped into the Zeitgeist, praised by H.L. Mencken, T.S. Eliot (who mentioned Scott in the same breath as 'The Master' i.e. Henry James.) It still sells 300,000 copies a year. This is a writer who was frequently broke and in Hollywood was shunned (they don't like lushes) and treated like a loser. To my mind a beautiful book with its unforgettable closing lines. There are points on the book but if you have the words 'sick in tired' at lines 9/10 on page 205 you are almost there. There are 5 other points including - at page 60 line 6 the word 'chatter'- should be there, Scott replaced in the second state with the word 'echolalia.' Odd move. At the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society's 1996 conference, co-sponsored by Princeton University a scholar gave a paper on the word 'echolalia' in Gatsby. They are still talking about it in New Jersey.

VALUE? Jacketless copies go for about $3000 in nice condition, possibly a bit more if they are noticeably fresh. It is possible that the seller currently offering a copy at $9000 sans d/w is 'having a laugh.' One hopes so. In auction it has made as much as $175,000 with a jacket. A copy in a restored jacket failed to reach its $60,000 reserve in 2002, often the fate of restored objects. The Neville copy in a frayed second state jacket made $145,000, however it was nicely inscribed. The point on the jacket, and it is one that is rarely invoked, is that the J in Jay Gatsby on the rear panel is lower case and was altered in ink (shades of the first Hobbit jacket.) It is worth quoting this auction catalogue description of it: 'The dust jacket on The Great Gatsby — a depiction of a woman’s face (Daisy’s) brooding over an amusement park version of New York at night — has achieved iconic status. The design by Francis Cugat (the brother, incidently, of bandleader Xavier Cugat) ...Fitzgerald (wrote) to Perkins, ‘For Christs sake don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.’ Trivia: I had an aunt who knew Xavier Cugat; did his brother get him a copy? [ W/Q **** ]

Edward Abbey. Jonathan Troy.

Edward Abbey. Jonathan Troy. JONATHAN TROY. Dodd, Mead, NY 1954.

Current Selling Prices
$1250-$2000 /£650-£1100 Want level 50- 75 High


MODERN FIRST EDITION
Author's first book. One of those first books that the author was later emabarrassed by and never allowed to be reprinted. Abbey himself called it 'bad Thomas Wolfe.' These books, disowned by their authors, are often valuable because the first edition is usually the only edition - a classic example is Graham Greene's 'Rumour at Nightfall' - very saleable, even sans d/w. 5000 copies were printed but the book seems to have gone to ground; it is said that when a fan asked Abbey where they could get the novel the great man said "I don't know where you can find one, but if you do, burn it."

VALUE? Seldom seen at less than $1000 in jacket and superior copies can make over $2000. Much wanted. The spine is usually sunned; signed copies are not unknown.

A Question of Upbringing. Anthony Powell.

Another old Etonian, our third on this list. The portrait of Powell is from the Wallace Collection (many thanks) a great and good place to browse in the Harley Street / Baker Street area. In their splendid late 18th century townhouse they put on a Powell exhibition in 2006 complete with Burra paintings, Misha Black d/ws and AP letters, manuscripts and his writing desk. This desk was childish in size indicating that Powell was unexpectedly short -- probably about the same height as Brad Pitt or Mick Jagger. Another trivial connection is his gothic American character Russell Gwinnett featured in the late volumes - a direct descendent of Button Gwinnet - whose signature we illustrated here last week.

Anthony Powell. A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING.Heinemann, London 1951.

Current Prices
$950-$1400 / £500-£750

MODERN FIRST EDITION.
The first and probably the most valuable book in Powell's 12 volume 'A Dance to the Music of Time'- his masterly 'roman fleuve' in the wake of Proust. Set at an unnamed public school (based on Eton) and featuring Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator and his chums Stringham and Templer. It also introduces the key figure in the series Widmerpool - a classic type. The sort of guy you knew when young and regarded as something of a bore and an embarrassment but who rises in the world, way past you, sometimes to great office or great wealth. An unstoppable, slightly grotesque figure possessed of immense willpower and a teflon coated resilience. Said to have been based on a mixture of men including the Lord Chancellor Sir Reginald Manningham Buller (known at the Bar as 'Bullying Manner.') Widmerpudlian is the adjective. Widmerpool , by the way, is a village near Nottingham.
Powell is our own Proust and is considered by some, including not a few French intellos, to have surpassed him. Powell has written about Proust including a good piece on Proust as soldier. Another influence,discernible in his matchless prose style, is Robert Burton and his 'Anatomy of Melancholy.' The title of a an earlier work 'Afternoon Men' came from him.

VALUE? Hard to find a decent jacketed copy for much less than £700. Slightly fragile jacket. The next two (both with titles taken from the City) 'A Buyer's Market' and 'The Acceptance World' are hard to find in good state for less than £500. Decent sets in jacket can go for over £3K, a set with every one inscribed to Denis Wheatley made £10K in 2002. It should be noted that Wheatley's library was invariably in fab condition. Powell is likely to be on the move with a large and well heeled customer base, esp in America. Sets used to make less than £300 in the 1980s. At that time a dealer tried to establish 'points' on some in the series, based on the weave of cloth of the book. He had examined early presentation copies to determine precedence. No one was the slightest bit interested.

Want level 15-25 Quite High

To the Lighthouse

This is the first unequivocal modern first edition I am evaluating and pontificating about. It is a category that means less than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. Now everyone is a modern first edition dealer and the game is no longer in the hands of suave and sophisticated specialists. The books have become too damn valuable just for those dudes. Antiquarian dealers have added modern firsts esp 'highspots' to their wares and locked cabinets are filled with mylar protected jacketed treasures like....

Virginia Woolf. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Hogarth Press, London 1927


MODERN FIRST EDITION
Key modernist work and one of Virginia Woolf's masterpieces ( 'Dalloway' and 'Room' and esp 'The Waves' have their champions.) 3000 printed but uncommon and valuable in a decent jacket - illustrated by her sister Vanessa Bell. VW was worried about the reviews when it came out. She wrote in her diary "Book out..I am anxious about Time passes...think the whole thing maybe pronounced soft, shallow, insipid, sentimental.' 'Time Passes' was the name of the book's middle section and signifies the stream of consciousness style. She quickly bucked up with the obvious success of the book and treated herself to a car. It was a Singer-- I used to see Hillman Singers around when very young, I guess they were heirs to Virginia's motor. Where is that car now!?

VALUE? One sees copies in decent jackets for nigh on £10K (($18K) and a really decent copy made a heady £15K at Bonham's 2005. Said to have been bought by a dealer. A good looking copy made $9000 on ebay, 12/06, in nice d/w but significantly restored. To be fair this was fully disclosed and an interesting d/w restoration word was used - 'blended' - referring to the expensive paper microsurgery process and the 'touching in' that takes place. Sans jacket it makes a few hundred quid and some bind it up in full leather, talk it up ('triumph of modernism' etc.,) and ask and sometimes get a grand. Buying VW, for Bloomsbury lovers, is an act of reverence. Btw our photo shows a 1920s 848cc Singer Junior, almost certainly the model that she bought. It was introduced at the London Car Show in 1926. It was available in a covered version but I like to think Virginia would have gone for the open top. She used to write standing up at her desk and liked to do things the hard way so a bit of fresh air would not have bothered her.


Current Prices $9000-$18000 / £5000-£10000 Want level 25-50 Highish