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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

The Legend of Martin Stone, Bookscout extraordinaire.

The above book was found by East Anglian bookseller Robin Summers. He is a friend of Martin Stone and spotted the incredible likeness of the villain on the cover of this obscure French policier to the great bookscout, old rocker and now, boulevardier. Martin spends most of his time in France and now affects a brown hat, suit and tie - so it is fitting that this book should be the only image of him, especially as it is a translation from a British thriller. Take it from me - the guy with the knife is a doppelganger for Martin.

There are probably tens of thousands of bookscouts in this world and maybe even a few thousand full time. Martin is simply the most famous of them and probably the best. A legend in his own lunchtime. The writer John Baxter who accompanied Martin on a bookhunting trip on America's West Coast attributes Martin with supernatural powers of divination (rather like the 'divvy' Lovejoy). At some point on the trip they were shadowed by a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who wrote:

'...Stone, an elfin man in old Carnaby Street threads, a felt hat pulled down over his unruly eyebrows, was briefly famous to English rock 'n' roll audiences in the 1960s, when he played guitar in stints with the Mod band the Action and blues-rockers Savoy Brown. There are those who believe he was more gifted than Eric Clapton, but to anyone who might be in the market for a $35, 000 first edition of "The Great Gatsby," Martin Stone is much better known as one of the world's premier book scouts.
He once sold Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page a copy of the "I-Ching" previously owned by the occultist Aleister Crowley. Stone's legend is such that Peter Howard, proprietor of Berkeley's rare-book haven Serendipity and himself a renowned dealer, has published a limited-edition portfolio tribute to him priced at $5,000.
If Howard is a Christlike figure, as Baxter puts it, in the book world, then Stone is John the Baptist.
"He's out there in the wilderness," Baxter says. "He taught me most of what I know. Also took most of my money, actually."
... Stone, Baxter claims, has an uncanny clairvoyance when it comes to finding rare books. Embellishing the details of their countless scouting expeditions together, he tells of Stone, fast asleep in the backseat of a car, waking with a start to ask their whereabouts.
After directing his driver down a seemingly random off-ramp into a singularly unpromising backwater, they'll come across a decrepit junk store run by "an old bloke, maybe brewing a pot of stew." Somewhere in the back, behind the old bike parts and the rusty tools, they'll invariably hit a mother lode -- a box of Virginia Woolf first editions, perhaps, all inscribed by the author, worth tens of thousands.
"And you think, 'How'd he know that?' " says Baxter. "On some other level, he knows."

The stuff about finding a box of Virginia Woolfs is, frankly, bollocks - John is a master blagueur in the Australian mode. His book 'A Pound of Paper' is one of the great books about books - better than Basbanes - the man is in the line of Andrew Lang.

How does Martin do it? It helps that he is very sharp, well read and seriously driven. His main talent is his incredible memory--Martin can remember a small chip on the back of a dust jacket of a book he owned for an hour in 1975. Forget 'Funes the Memorious.' *** Martin has the ability to recall books once seen, find them again by sight without having to read every damn title in a shop full of books. He knows which publishers to pull, which sections of shops are likely to yield treasures and, crucially, when not to bother. Lesser scouts have to look at every book while 'the stoned one' (as he used to be known) is across the street enjoying an espresso and selling his treasures on the mobile. NB-- in the UK a bookscout is known as a 'runner' and in France a 'courtier.' There is a subtle difference as the British runner (usually town based) does not necessarily 'scout' books - he 'runs' them i.e. from on shop to another with a decent but not large mark up, sometimes at the behest of the shopkeeper. Martin is both a scout and a runner (and a courtier. )


*** A short story from "Ficciones' by Jorge Luis Borges. This comparison with the memory of Funes is something of an exaggeration. Borges says of him:- "He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho. These recollections were not simple; each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, etc."

Goddam, Goddam the Relister Man

ADDALL.COM
Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age.  (ISBN: 1851821880)
MICHAEL J. ENRIGHT


FOUR COURTS PRESS, 1996. Published by FOUR COURTS PRESS in 1996. Hardback with Dust jacket. Condition: Very Good. May show some wear. Price: £ 812.50 ($1665)

AMAZON/CANADA
Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age (Hardcover)
by Michael J. Enright (Author)

FOUR COURTS PRESS, 1996. Published by FOUR COURTS PRESS in 1996. Hardback with Dust jacket. Condition: Very Good. May show some wear. CDN$ 2,961.75 (£1480)

The above is a daft web price for a book from the Irish academic press Four Courts. It mainly concerns barbarian drinking rituals. The book has been on sale for about a year. It sits with a genuine seller at £812.50 and is also being 'offered' by a 'Relister' at a grotesque £1480. I have tried in quiet reflection to work out how a person who is probably otherwise a pleasant individual, not giving to chewing carpets or shouting at bus queues, could come up with £800+ for a recently out of print insubstantial and slightly obscure academic book. A book that the author himself has stated is not worth more than $200 and where the publisher has announced a reprint at any moment. It dawned on me that this is how it came about.

The book goes out of print and copies start appearing at about £300 and actually sell. About a year ago there were copies on Amazon at $300 to $500. While they are still around a RELISTER (the villain of the piece) relists the genuine copies at £900 (under a thousand they tend to treble up, over that a near double is attempted.) He does not own the book but if lucky enough to get an order will buy the £300 copy and pocket the difference. Meanwhile a slightly dim bookseller flown with greed and ignorance gets a genuine copy and sees the £900 price and not realising that it's a relister's price puts £800 on his copy. All cheaper copies sell, the £900 pragmatic relister now has only the £800 one to sell if he gets an order, a crap profit and risky to boot, so he now relists at £1400 - an almost certifiable price that only a rich, stupid and desperate person obsessed by La Tene and barbarian drinking rituals would pay. Not a lot of people fit all four categories. Note the exact same description and the not even bothering to describe condition - 'may show some wear' - for £800 one might expect a conscientious condition report, even a scholarly puff and some unctuous remarks like 'possibly the finest work on the European Warband etc.,'

This process happens all the time and explains many an outrageous price on the web. One might call these 'ghost prices.' They are trace reflections of real books that have sold in the past. Against these prices dealers who genuinely acquire this title, and have their greed firmly in check, probably get a fast £300 but the monumental prices are very, very rarely achieved. People are simply not that stupid. Relisters list hundreds of thousands of books on many sites and wait for some poor bastard to come along and order at their inflated price and then they (the relister) buy the book from a dealer or the publisher who has it at a fraction of theirs. I doubt it's the kind of business that gets you a Porsche but it is legal and requires absolutely no books. Avoid these people like the plague! But as they say in France Je m'en fous -polite translation 'I've said my bit and I'm out of here.' Here is the publisher's own listing (a reprint is scheduled for this year at a cheerful £76.50--- schadenfreude all round! ).

'Lady with a Mead Cup is a broad-ranging, innovative and strikingly original study of the early medieval barbarian cup-offering ritual and its social, institutional and religious significance. Medievalists are familiar with the image of a queen offering a drink to a king or chieftain and to his retainers, the Wealhtheow scene in Beowulf being perhaps the most famous instance.
Drawing on archaeology, anthropology and philology, as well as medieval history, Professor Enright has produced the first work in English on the warband and on the significance of barbarian drinking rituals.'

Shakespeare and Co., - George and Sylvia and Bill

Our photo shows George Whitman and his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman at George's world famous bookshop in Paris, France - Shakespeare & Co. The guy in the middle is, of course, Bill Clinton, who dropped by this summer. He is one of many distinguished visitors to the Left Bank bookstore--the visitor's books is signed by many a writer--Durrell, Miller, every Beat who ever published a book and wore a beret + serious celebs like Bruce Springsteen (left the comment 'a rocker and a reader') Jackie Kennedy and Johnny Depp.

A friend who was in the shop sometime in the mid 1990s was approached by a raincoated figure carrying a Russian newspaper who asked her in a flat London demotic "where's the Louvre' - it was Bowie, the thin white duke himself. At our shop (Any Amount of Books in Charing Cross Road) the best we can do is Michael Foot, the Jesus and Mary Chain and the late John le Mesurier (+ Quentin Tarantino and also Martin Stone tells me he once met Captain Sensible here--it doesn't get much better.) Martin, who worked for George for a while recalls meeting Francis Bacon in his shop and being taken for a meal by him at the next door restaurant La Bucherie.

What I like about this picture is George's pyjamas. You wouldn't catch the unlettered Bush or his poodle Blair posing with a beautiful young girl and an old geezer in pyjamas. The charismatic Clinton is way beyond all that. George is not the only bookseller who affects pyjamas in his shop--there is the Suffolk (Chapel Books, Westleton) bookseller Bob Jackson, no mean player when it comes to eccentricity--on cold days he wear two pairs. George of course is famous for wearing two or more pairs of trousers in the French winter. In a trade full of characters he is, definitely, at number one--his Wikipedia entry has some detail e.g. his flair for cookery-'...on Sunday mornings he cooks his guests a pancake breakfast, brewing up a thin ersatz "syrup" out of some burnt sugar and water.'

A documentary titled "Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man", by Gonzague Pichelin and Benjamin Sutherland,came out in 2005. At the end of the film George demonstrates his unique approach to hair styling by trimming his hair using flames from a candle to set his hair on fire then damping it out. A visit to Paris used to be incomplete without attending a reading at George's followed by his legendary chicken dumplings. He has been generous to many a young traveller--in the 1950s a young Beatnik--now an eminent bookseller- was given a fiver (with no expectation of repayment) by George to get back to England. Many a backpacker has crashed at the shop when funds ran out and paid for the stay with a bit of washing up or carpentry etc.,

All hail George and Sylvia and Bill! Sylvia, 22, now runs the shop, while George,90, keeps abreast of the times reading the Herald Tribune and perusing printed out emails. Sylvia now puts on a well respected annual festival --during her 2006 Literary Festival, the French Minister of Culture awarded George the "Officier des Arts et Lettres" medal for his contribution to the arts over the past fifty years. There are weekly events at the shop detailed on their Shakespeare & Co website. There are many claims on the Web that it is the most famous bookshop in the world - these would have Basil Blackwell, Christina Foyle and Tim Waterstone turning in their graves let alone Mr Barnes and Mr Noble. Let's say for the moment it is the coolest bookshop in the world.

Bibliomancy - divination by the book

The Occult Sciences; A Compendium of Transcendental Doctrine and Experiment (A.E. Waite.)

BIBLIOMANCY
I found this in A.E. Waite's 'Occult Sciences' (1891) between Belomancy and Capnomancy (divination by smoke) - a method of detecting witches and sorcerers and also using a Bible for prediction etc., Belomancy, by the way, is divination by arrows...

"...Occasionally the forms of divination exceeded the bounds of superstition, and passed into the region of frantic madness. There was a short way the sorcerers which was probably the most potent discoverer of witchcraft which any ingenuity could devise. A large Bible was deposited on one side of a pair of weighing scales. The person suspected of magical practices was set on the opposite side. If he outweighed the Bible he was innocent; in the other case, he was held guilty. In the days of this mystical weighing and measuring, the scales may be truly said to have fallen from the eyes of a bewizarded generation, and to have revealed 'sorcery and enchantment everywhere.'

Bibliomancy, however, included a more harmless practice, and one of an exceedingly simple character. This was the opening of the Bible with a golden pin, and drawing an omen from the first passage which presented itself. Books like the Scriptures, the "Following of Christ," and similar works, abound in suggestive and pertinent passages which all men may apply to temporal affairs, but declares that he had recourse to it in all cases of spiritual difficulty. The appeal to chance is, however, essentially superstitious."

It has been said that the art movement known as Dada was started by someone (Tzara?) opening a Zurich town directory and blindly plonking his figure down against the name of a Swiss burgher called Dada - another dubious example of divination by book.

[I swear I have had some pretty heavy bibles in my time and still have a few in stock that weigh as much as 30 pounds but I have never seen one as heavy as a man.]



VALUE? If you have a clean copy of A.E. Waite's 'The Occult Sciences; A Compendium of Transcendental Doctrine and Experiment' (Kegan, Paul, London 1891) it is worth about £100 but not a great deal more. Waite is not Crowley and this is not one of his most sought after books. The big money with Waite is with his work on Freemasonry and such titles as ' The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. Including the Rites and Mysteries of Goetic Theurgy, Sorcery and Infernal Necromancy' (Redway 1898). Waite was good on ritual and ceremonial magic but auction records reveal nothing over £100 whereas on ABE you can find some 'advanced' $1500+ prices from dealers patient enough to wait long nights and days for a sale.

A Bookshop Rave

This happened a couple of weeks ago in my own neck of the woods-- a 'rave' in a bookshop. Young Julius Reed, 25, of Reed Books, High Street, Aldeburgh, Suffolk (UK) hosted some pretty loud music, a deejay and some crazy dancing in his bookshop during Aldeburgh's annual carnival. A few ravers even bought some books. I have been worrying recently about the future of bookshops and how to get young people to use them and like them and Julius, book collector, party animal and pillar of the community might have found a solution. Desperate remedies. Father Mathew Fox in Berkeley managed to get younger people back to church by having raves there and surely Julius is doing the same in East Anglia for books. Bless them both.

Julius buys, sells and trades books - the shop is more Black Books than Blackwells, but I have found some great stuff there - hunting books, golf, modern firsts, leather bound books, Folio Society, children's lit, thrillers, art, books on tape and signed poetry. He even has stuff to read. No incunabula so far.

Another rave organised by Julius received the unwelcome attention of the local constabulary and was shut down - it had been advertised on the net. Julius explained from his cell that it was just a question of semantics:

"The 'rave' that was advertised on the internet was in fact a birthday party ...and an artist's event ...the listing used the word rave as a verb, not a noun: come raving at the community hall, King's Field, Aldeburgh. Not, there's a rave on King's Field...I think this is where the confusion lies - the word rave does not mean the same thing to the current generation of teenagers as it does to the police and other older members of the community.”

The whole thing was reported in the local paper - The East Anglian - which resulted in good publicity for the bookshop and for the man they called the youngest bookseller in East Anglia. All hail Julius for doing something to bring books to the awareness of the ringtone generations. His achievement is hard to overstate but I'll try--singlehandedly this man has brought the second hand booktrade into the 21st century, he has breathed new life into a slumbering trade, he is the saviour of a noble business - why man he doth bestride the world like a Colossus - never in the field of human conflict has so much.....

The Incredible BookMan

Today's entry is a fairly unashamed piece of self promotion. We sell BookMan through our shop website. The BookMan is a bookshelf in the shape of a man and is a highly decorative piece of furniture as well as a sculpture. Designed by East Anglian artist and craftsman Kazmierz Szmauz who also designed the CDMan, the DVDMan and VideoMan. However, as booksellers we regard BookMan as his highest achievement. The BookMan holds about 100 books and looks most splendid when they are leatherbound books. Getting the right books is an interesting exercise, the smaller books are more difficult to find-with my own model (above) I occasionally change them around. They can look good with cloth books also, and I have seen one entirely filled with Pan paperbacks - a great piece.

BookMan 1 measures 70 inches high by 45 inches wide and is made from pine, although other woods can be used. Shelves are best adapted to books beneath 8 inches in height. Sometimes seen out of the corner of the eye they seem real, something to do with them being pretty much the same size as a grown man. We had some emails once from someone who objected to BookMan standing on books--they said it was irreverent. I pointed out that he was not standing on the books but resting his feet on them.



Each BookMan is individually built on demand and signed by the artist - BookMan 1 is £1200 - shipping can be expensive but not prohibitive. BookMan has been featured in French and Italian style magazines and we were even contacted by a fashion magazine in China wanting high definition photos which they presumably published.

Awesome Book Wants list from 1920s

BOOKS AND PRINTS
SPECIALLY WANTED TO BE PURCHASED

WALTER T. SPENCER,
27, NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C.
(Opposite Mudie's Library and near the British Museum).

Telephone No. 5847 Central. Telegraphic Address- "Phiz, London."
Private Address- CULVER HOUSE, THE ESPLANADE, SHANKLIN, ISLE OF WIGHT.
Bankers - LONDON & COUNTY (New Oxford St. Branch).

Any Parcels of Books sent, I willingly pay carriage both ways, if we do not come to terms.

Cash always sent by Return Post. Established 1884

→ Shall be glad to hear of Imperfect Copies or Odd Vols of any Books or odd plates in this List.


We recently found this closely written 24 page catalogue of 'books wanted' put out by London bookseller Walter T. Spencer in about 1920 (date taken from BM copy.) We are publishing it online almost in its entirety (long lists of Scott, Ainsworth and Dickens have been abbreviated.) Some of the books are now impossible to find, a lot were very rare even then - especially anonymous pamphlets put out by the Romantics and items such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's impossible first book 'Battle of Marathon'. Spencer's list encapsulates bookseller wisdom of his age and rarities passed down from 19th century book sellers. These were the 'sexy' books of his day and some of them are still appearing on wants list, some no longer wanted or easily found (e.g. Charles Lever, Frank Smedley, Walter Scott.)

I may add a few notes in but time forbids me from identifying every anonymous and pseudonymous item. Occasionally he offers money for a book and one can multiply that by about 100 to get his modern price. It is to be assumed with some books that they are there because a valued customer had asked for them.



Spencer, known in the trade as 'Tommy', wrote a memoir "40 Years in my Bookshop" (London 1923) that reveals part of his story. Spencer's dates were possibly 1866-1964, he is unknown to Wikipedia and the DNB but these old booksellers lived long lives. He was a major book seller of his time, a friend of forger Thomas J. Wise and appears to have dabbled in forgery himself. His shop was at 27 New Oxford and he dealt in prints, plate books, bound sets, the Romantics, Americana, first editions of his time (Wilde, Conrad, Galsworthy, etc.). A big Dickens man, popular with visiting American plutocrats like pickle king Henry J. Heinz and numbering among his customers, Sir Henry Irving, Gladstone, George Meredith, Andrew Lang, Gissing, Pater, Swinburne, and Richard Jefferies. Tim D'Arch Smith recalls Spencer trading from Upper Berkeley Street in the late 1950s. He even remembers his bookseller code - 'TWICKENHAM' with T standing for one, W for 2 etc.,

Marc de Vaulbert Chantilly in his excellent survey of bookseller's memoirs (in 'Out of Print & Into Profit' 2006) quotes O.F. Snelling '...much of what he knew has certainly gone into limbo...some of the best tales I ever heard of Spencer's dealings never got into his book.' He was a constructor of false provenances, involved with some fake Shaw letters, a maker up of questionable sets of Dickens in the parts and would also 'sophisticate' books with unacknowledged facsimiles. His 1920 wants list (undoubtedly effective) could, to a great degree, have been the source of his fortune. It partly answer bibliophile A.E. Newton's remark- 'How he does it, where he gets them, is his business.' There is often a clever trick or stratagem behind fortunes made in the book or art trade.

The first book mentioned 'Absurdities In Prose & Verse' is illustrated by Alfred Crowquill (pic by him above) with 13 hand coloured paltes and now goes for £150 + in nice condition, for the ninth book in the list- 'A Declaration of the State of Virginia' (1620) you might get £15000. It is likely that Spencer put many standard collector's books in his list to hide the occasional devastatingly valuable book.

Absurdities In Prose Verse, 1827
Account of New South Wales, 1804
Actors by Daylight, 1838-9, 55 Nos.
Actors by Gaslight, 1838, 37 Nos.
Adair (J.) History of American Indians, 1775
Adam (R. and J.) Works in Architecture, 3 vols, folio, 1778, &c.
Addison (J.) Damascus and Palymyra, 2 vols, 1838
A Day's Ride, second edition
A Declaration of the State of Virginia, 1620
A Dialogue in the Shades, 1766
Click for the complete pamphlet...

Celebrity Book Collectors. Part Two.

Sometimes it is hard to know whether a celeb is a book collector or merely a buyer of books who is occasionally spotted in bookshops. Sometimes he or she is merely buying an expensive book as a gift or inducement. For a while at the turn of the century it became fashionable for Hollywood stars to buy one another rare books as presents, especially at the end of making a movie.

Seen in bookshops, but not confirmed as collectors, are stars like Dustin Hoffman, Elton John (can be seen in Sandoe's of Chelsea) David Bowie (Shakespeare and Co, Paris) Quentin Tarantino (Charing Cross Road) Bob Dylan (Heritage in LA) Neil Young (Logos, Santa Cruz) Julia Roberts (Notting Hill.) I remember Ronnie Corbett showing up once at our Hammersmith shop wanting yards of leather for his mansion -- he may be known in USA from 'Extras' (small guy caught snorting coke in the loo at an award ceremony - ''just a bit of wizz to blow out the cobwebs.") The finest star I ever saw in our shop (and there haven't been many) was John le Mesurier--who seemed exactly the same as on screen--vague, diffident, posh, charming. Our shop was also frequented by a pop combo known as the Jesus and Mary Chain. Sorry to be dropping such heavy names.

Madonna. Said to colllect early books by and about women starting with Hildegard of Bingen, Juliana of Norwich etc.,. Doesn't want them in Latin because she likes to actually read them. An expensive collecting area.

Keith Richard. His library ('reading retreat') is pictured in Estelle Elis's 1995 book 'At Home With Books: How Booklovers Live With and Care for Their Libraries' copies of which can be found for about $35 inc post. He has quite alot of books but they look like fairly common military books, sensational paperbacks, Franklin mint classics, 'Occult Reich' that sort of thing. Perched on one bookshelf is a bottle of HP sauce, a noose and a skull wearing a sailor's hat. I have heard that Keith has more recently moved on to serious and valuable books including Early Printing. Another distinguished former heroin addict and collector was the late John Paul Getty III who had a world class library - especially Pre Raphaelites and Incunabula.

Bernie Taupin. Elton John’s long-time lyricist. Mentioned in Rick Gekoski's excellent 'Tolkien's Gown.' Gekoski is our own Basbanes but lacks Basbanes' boring side. Bernie, not short of a few bob, bought from Rick a superb 2 vol Paris 'Lolita' in 1992 inscribed with the customary butterfly drawing thus -‘For Graham Greene from Vladimir Nabokov, November 8, 1959’. He paid £9000 and sold it a bit later for not a lot more. Slightly daft move as in 2002 it made $264,000 at Christies. Bernie collects modern firsts esp Greene.

Thurston Moore. Leader of experimental rock group 'Sonic Youth'. An assiduous collector of experimental 'underground' literature mainly from the 1960s. Like many collectors now he is not served by some tweedy book dealer but buys from all and sundry over the net. Much of this stuff is ephemeral and rare. He in his turn is collected (see Prince below.)

Neil Pearson. Excellent Brit actor mostly seen on TV but can be found in Bridget Jones movies, 'Love Actually' and the recent TV thriller 'The State Within'. Also reads audiobooks. Great collector of 'Published in Paris' books esp Obelisk Press. He recently appeared with Rick Gekoski at Hay on Wye festival talking about rare books.

David Attenborough. Much loved maker of fine Nature programmes for BBC. A great collector of serious older Natural History books especially those with colour plates. Seen at ABA book fairs.



Barry Humphries. Aka Dame Edna Everage. Serious collector of decadent literature -- especially 1890s. Is said to favour minor nineties poets like Theodore Wratislaw and illustrators like Charles Shannon. Has a long suit of Oscar Wilde. Married Stephen Spender's daughter.


Ashley Drane. Star of 'That's So Raven' a TV show whose plot is summarised thus: 'A teenage girl periodically receives brief psychic visions of the near future. Trying to make these visions come true results in trouble, and hilarious situations, for the girl and her friends.' Classic modern collector--Ashley collects 'Alice in Wonderland' and has every kind of object, ephemeroid and doll but finds the actual book a bit boring. Certainly doesn't have an 1865 printing, possibly just the Franklin Mint. This may be the future...

Michael Winner. Film director. The man they love to hate. Has a house in Kenington next to fellow book collector Jimmy Page's Victorian pile (by Burges.) Collects Arthur Rackham including drawings etc., I am told Rackham prices are falling and he has become a little vieux jeu.

Jay Leno. Lantern jawed US TV presenter. Collects cars and motorbikes but apparently has an impressive Dickens collection -- including some works 'in the parts' --i.e. in the earliest form that his works were issued.

Richard Prince. Wealthy and prolific contemporary American artist, probably best known for his pulp fiction nurse paintings.

Prince collects books and ephemera much of which end up in his work e.g. a Sonic Youth check with a signed drumhead and a Sid Vicious letter. He also collects American first editions and his collection morphed into art can be seen in the Glenn Horowitz published 2004 book 'Richard Prince: American English.' Horowitz is , of course, one of the biggest dealers in rare books in the world. Prince is said to have paid a 6 figure sum for a 'Naked Lunch' presented from Burroughs to Paul Bowles. Rather too much money but it may end up as seven figure art. Our own diamond geezer Hirst has a masked nurse by Prince in his collection.

Other glitterati associated with books and collecting include Lana Turner (serious collector) Michael York (seen with Dame Edna) Bryan Ferry (collects Wyndham Lewis) Gregg Lake (fishing books) Vic Reeves (exploration) Ricky Jay (magic and illusion) Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters (Black history) John Larroquette, Daniel Radcliffe (Potter actor seen spending large sums at auction on modern literature in manuscript) Mike Read (Brit DJ with serious Rupert Brooke collection) Simon Callow, Michael Lerner (bird books) Terry Jones, Herbert Lom, Hanif Kureishi, Michael Flatley (Irish literature) Michael Richards (Kramer in Seinfeld) Andrew Lloyd Webber (PRBs).

Lastly I once saw Kate Bush at auction buying the film script of 'Magical Mystery Tour' annotated by the mantra muttering moptops themselves. She paid £15000 and I was second underbidder. I wish I had gone on but there wasn't a lot of money about in the mid 1980s.

Celebrity Book Collectors. Part One.

Having done Billionaire book collectors I thought I would move on to mere mortals and do Celebrity book collectors. Let's celebrate the stars who collect books -they spread the word, they give book collecting a better name and they pour some of their swags of cash into our coffers. This list won't be comprehensive and may include some celebs who merely wandered into bookshops or bookfairs but are not the real deal. Although the cult of the celebrity (today's aristos) is distasteful and banal, the ones who collect books, and even read them, are the good guys--these aren't your Vin Diesels, Limp Bizkits and Jordans. Here goes:-

Johnny Depp. Seen at bookfairs. Collects beats, said to have bought Kerouac's shabby old mac for $20K. He starred as seedy book scout Dean Corso in Polanski's 'The Ninth Gate.' Corso is trying to track down an ancient text called "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" which is supposed to be able to summon the Devil himself. A rare and dangerous book. Johnny's brother, Dan Depp, once had a cool bookshop in Santa Cruz, California - 'The Frugal Bookworm.'

Whoopi Goldberg. Seen at shops and bookfairs. Also collects bakelite. Has been known to spend such a lot at a fair that she turned a lousy fair into a good 'un. Bless her.

Brad Pitt. I saw him wandering around the Los Angeles bookfair in a grey hooded tracksuit. Small but perfectly formed. He was buying Salinger, Kerouac and Cormac for four figure sums. A flunky paid and collected the books. Brad can also be found on audio CD reading Cormac McCarthy -All The Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities Of The Plain.

Sarah Michelle Gellar. Aka 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. She once told an interviewer, “I cannot go into the Heritage Book Shop without buying something. I joke that it’s my church. Whenever I’m having a bad day, I can go in there and look at these books and get completely lost in the old, illustrative art.” Heritage has just shut down but I guess the church reference comes from the ultra kitsch stained glass windows which even in LA were de trop.

Jimmy Page. Led Zeppelin (pictured left.) Collects Aleister Crowley and at one time had a bookshop in Kensington Church Street. Said to be cautious with his money when it comes to books --he is sometimes known as "Led Wallet." So keen was he on the Great Beast he bought Boleskine House, Crowley's rural retreat on the shores of Loch Ness.

Another celeb who has a bookshop (and collects) is the great British film director Bryan Forbes. He collects Napoleon and has a bookshop in toney Virginia Water (Surrey.) Larry McMurtry famed novelist and screenwriter also collects books and has a bookshop -'Booked Up'- in Archer City, a one horse town in Texas. The store is arguably the largest single used bookstore in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 titles. All second hand or used or 'previously owned.'

Nicholas Cage. Serious comic book collector, offloaded part of his collection last year for a million dollars or more. He turned up at our London shop earlier this year and was buying pretty illustrated books. Had a minder but was apparently a very amusing bloke. Talking of minders - the Reverend Ian Paisley used to turn up with 4 bodyguards and buy armfuls of theology. A serious collector.

The first great celebrity collector of the modern age has to be songwriter Jerome Kern. He wrote "Ol' Man River," "I Won't Dance," "The Way You Look Tonight," and "A Fine Romance" and was said to live off the income of his income. He collected books like Shelley's own copy of Queen Mab, complete with annotations in the author's hand -- which he bought for $6000 in a 1920 auction. (Its previous owner, Buxton Forman, had paid £6 for it in 1896.) Such a book makes a jacketed 'On the Road' look like a Mills and Boon. In the famous Kern sale of 1929 at Anderson Galleries, he recouped his initial investment when the book sold for $68,000. (The auction total was $1,729,462.50.) No celebrity (except Gates) could come near having such a fine collection now.

More of this nonsense later in the week when I shall be dropping names like Ashley Drane (of 'That's So Raven') Richard Prince (ridiculously trendy artist) Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) Bernie Taupin (Elton's lyricist) Madonna, Anita Pointer and that little bloke who plays Harry Potter.

The Future of the LongPen

Having read over at Book Patrol that 84 year old Norman Mailer doesn't fancy the journey to Edinburgh and will be signing books by the LongPen from New York, I decided to see how the thing works.

It was invented by Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood but presumably the thing itself was engineered by geeks and boffins at the Unotchit company that she formed to market this marvel. There is a video at Unotchit showing the thing in action.

The author faces the person who wants the signature on a video / internet link and asks them how they want the book signed, the author then signs it, chats a little to the fan and the fan sees the intended inscription and approves it - it is then sent over to the robotic inking arm at the other end. This process can be abbreviated depending on time and the length of the queue. Margaret says that, in fact, it is a more intimate experience than actual real life signings. It probably takes longer but the author hardly needs to leave home--no more lousy hotel rooms, long haul flights and jet lag. Baseball bats and hockey sticks can be signed, also CDs, checks, contracts and presumably prints and lithographs--Salvador Dali would have loved it.

What value do longpen signatures have and are they detectable if not declared? I looked up 'longpen' on ABE as a keyword --it brings up 4 entries, all signed Atwood books and all pushing the signatures as having been done long before the LongPen--so straightaway a virtue is being made of the real over the virtual--rather like the unrestored jacket being preferred to the restored or a signature in a book being better than on a pasted in bookplate. One Chicago dealer (www.modernrare.com) even holds forth on the subject in an entry for a signed proof of her 1991 novel 'Wilderness Tips which he lists at a modest $55:

'This copy is prominently and beautifully signed in black pen on the title page by Margaret Atwood. Atwood's penmanship is among the most beautiful among writers: Clean, flowing, and elegant. Laid-in is a copy of the Souvenir Program at which the signing was held. This signature was obtained in person, not through the author's "high-tech" invention called the LongPen. Copies "signed" in the latter manner must be identified as such because they have no collectible value. The point of a signed copy is that it unmistakably indicates that the author held the copy of the book and left his or her trace on it. '

Point taken, but will sellers identify LongPen signatures as such and will wily autograph dealers be able to pronounce on the matter -'Sorry this was signed with a LongPen - $5 is all we can give...'? Looking at the video they seem pretty good, possibly slightly scrawly but hard to distinguish from a face to face signing. They are quite similar to a cyclostyle signature--an old technology' device to reproduce the signatures of famous men--Churchill had one. These are distinguishable as fakes because they are always exactly the same.

So far Margaret Atwood, Dean Koontz and Robert Kennedy Jnr., have used it, and now Norman Mailer. I guess you have to know the names of the LongPen authors and the books they signed to be ahead of the game but it is possible in an increasingly virtual world that a remote signature will be considered pretty much as good as the real thing, or no one will really care anyway. It will also be useful to old and infirm authors + its use in business is likely to grow. The word itself reminds me of the cannibal word for humans- 'long pig' - and someone has suggested the alternative 'Roboscrawl'...

A Sale of Modern Movement books / Connolly 100

I am away in London - I went to a Sotheby's sale of the collection of books formed by Annette Campbell White - a highly literate San Francisco based money manager (MedVenture Associates.) The collection was based on 'the Connolly 100' - i.e. books listed by Cyril Connolly in his 1965 book-'The Modern Movement. One Hundred Key Books from England, France, and America 1880-1950.' She is said to be to be one of those fortunate persons who 'doesn't need money' and estimates and reserves were high as she would not care if the books came home unsold. A certain number of lots (about 25%) failed to sell - which, given the high reserves, is actually something of a success. The wholse sale made £1.3 million about half a million less than the top expectations. There was little for dealers who were consistently outbid by anonymous collectors. Prices often seemed higher than a dealer would ever think of charging but that is often the case. Paradoxically dealers will often pay more for a good book than the public so outbidding them is a risky game.

Many of the dealers attending were the same chaps who had sold Ms Campbell the books. When a collector wants something like the Connolly 100 you are basically working through a list. Many lots went to the same anonymous bidder (identified by a code number) on the phone who must have spent about £200K, possibly filling gaps in his or her own Connolly 100 collection. They were probably sitting by or in an 'infinity' pool in L.A. over breakfast.

The Gatsby went to the trade at £84K (jacket a bit chipped but a better than normal copy) and a very fresh 'The Sun Also Rises' at £60K. I learnt that the Gatsby jacket is about an eighth of an inch taller than the book and often turns up cut down to size or sadly creased at the overhang but this copy was complete and free of such problems. The first lot of the sale was a very nice 3 decker first of 'The Portrait of a Lady' which made £29K (all these prices including the 20% premium) against an estimate of £7000 - £9000 so it looked like it might be one of those sales where records were broken with every lot. However it was quickly followed by many 'bought in' lots, mostly over estimated French literature. Connolly liked his French books, some of which are now somewhat vieux jeu. I'm thinking of de Montherlant, Malraux and Michaux.

A slightly crumbly first of 'Ubu Roi with a signed presentation from Jarry made just under £3000- a great book but it had been bought in California where the climate is bad for the cheap French paper. If it had been a limpid edition de tete it could have been the most expensive lot in the sale. The auction appeared to be entirely free of French dealers and collectors -probably due to condition problems. The word on the street ( Bond Street that is) was that the stuff had all been bought too recently and was in less than fab condition.

A few trends were discernible - they still love Henry James, Conrad, Hardy, Proust, Waugh, Hemingway, Joyce and Eliot also anything Irish. Greene has gone a little flat but mostly still sold, likewise E.M. Forster (several 'buy- ins'). Hart Crane still works, Ezra Pound seemed a bit lacklustre, Norman Douglas seems to be making a comeback and Arthur Koestler seems to be in abeyance along with Henry Green, Robert Graves and the Sitwells. One remarkable result was a jacketless but decent Tarr (1918) with a nice inscription from Wyndham Lewis to Violet Hueffer (ie Vilolet Hunt.) It made £3600 against a reserve of £500. Lewis although much admired has been a very hard sell of late. Talking of Violet, Ford Madox Ford still rocks with a stunning £21,600 made for 'The Good Soldier' in a colourful but rather chipped (rare) jacket.

The attendees were mostly male, besuited, not young-- however I spotted Jeannette Winterson - she underbid some Woolfs and bought some Eliot and, I think, Macneice. In general American books did better than British and signed stuff was favoured. Conclusion --plenty of money about for the right stuff and the highbrow market is healthy and probably less volatile than the popular literature market. There may even be new blood collecting the Connolly 100...

Predictions--who to collect right now...

I was asked by top bloggerati - "Mr. Millions"/ C.Max Magee - to offer my 2 cents worth on the subject of which authors are worth investing in now for the future--i.e. who will be the collected writers in 10 to 15 years time. My response is posted over at his excellent and much visited blog  The Millions.

There are many pitfalls in this type of exercise. In the past books such as 'The White Hotel' by D.M. Thomas were tipped as invesments but the book is worth less now than it was 25 years ago. It is hard now to imagine the intense buzz about that book in the early 1980s--there were rumours that when a movie came out it would go ballistic. It never happened. * A decade before there had been similar collecting fever around the John Fowles book 'The Collector' - worth a whole lot more then than it is now. likewise Ondaatje's 'English Patient' (big when the film won Oscars) has fallen steeply in value.

In the distant past great things were expected of Donn Byrne, H.M. Tomlinson, Robert Nichols, Philip Gibbs and C.E. Montague. Do not phone a bookseller with a collection of books by this lot. In the overheated children's fiction market Eoin Colfer was tipped as the next big thing but isn't really happening. Generally it is best to avoid writers trumpeted as the next big thing. Patrick O'Brian, Ellis Peters and Robert Graves are, for the moment,  in a gentle decline. Authors can, of course, suddenly come back, some authors are in one moment and out the next and a little later everyone wants them again. The market is continually in flux and timing is crucial --my advice is to get your author before he starts to rise, dump him at the height of the market and chuckle as he then plummets like Icarus.

I should have put in Cormac McCarthy who, although high, could rise a bit more or even double. Being chosen by Oprah was unexpected but bloody helpful. Changes in taste, however, are unknowable and could later consign him into the 'soft price' category. The old cliche about buy what you love still holds... The full text went like this:

'Predicting which authors will be collected in the future is a good game but slightly risky.

In the past people have tried to suggest authors worthy of financial investment and often got it sadly wrong. E.g. a few years ago Louis de Bernieres was being tipped as a highly collectable author. His prices did indeed shoot up in value so that at one point fine firsts of Captain Corelli were worth as much as $2000, but it is now readily buyable at less than half that. It could be because there has been a move against authors associated with Magic Realism, but also because the book is readily available and copies just keep turning up. The lesson is that however good a writer is - if there are too many copies of his or her works (and not enough collectors) the book will not prove a good bet. Supply and demand. That being said let me try and suggest a few writers.

Of the serious American novelists you should be OK with Don DeLillo, Brett Easton Ellis (especially the UK hardback first of American Psycho), Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, William Gibson, Toni Morrison, limited editions of Vollmann, signed stuff by Hunter Thompson. Of the mass market authors, I cannot see Stephen King falling into desuetude but you need to stick to the early stuff, thriller writers like Michael Connelly, Pelecanos, Lee Child, Laurie King, Ian Rankin are happening and may continue to resonate. The big money is now in photobooks, children's literature (Rowling, Pullman, Dahl) and artist's books (Koons, Hirst, Warhol, Emin, Prince). Photographer Robert Frank's The Americans has more than trebled in value this century now selling for $10000+ in great condition, same goes for some of the young Japanese photographers. Condition is, as always, paramount.

The Irish poets like Heaney, Muldoon, Mahon and Michael Longley are a goodish bet. I like Harold Pinter and think he will rise in value - other Nobel Prize Winners might do well like Gao Xingjian and Jose Saramago. South American writers are a little played out with the brilliant exception of Roberto Bolano (who, perversely, said that most writers who won Nobel prizes were "jerks"). Another great collectible iconoclast is the French enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq. US poet Philip Levine will hopefully be seriously collected, possibly Patti Smith and amongst the Brit poets I would back James Fenton.
A litany of Brit writers like Ian Mcewan, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes and Irvine Welsh are unlikely to flatline and in the "world music" category dig Haruki Murakami, Aime Cesaire, Khaled Hosseini, and Naguib Mahfouz. Of older writers I think Flann O'Brien might well increase in value - his work is said to give clues to the real meaning of [the TV show] 'Lost'...

*A day of Biblical rain in New York... a winey dinner... On parting, Potter's face streamed with tears as his crippled, arthritic hands grasped  Lynch's lapels. If they didn't screw it up, he said, if they saw it through to the end, this would be the work they would both be remembered by. "This movie will be the Madame Bovary of our time."

D.M. Thomas in 'The Guardian'  2004 on the attempt to make the film of 'The White Hotel'. Dennis Potter had been hired as the script writer, David Lynch was to direct. Our pic shows the Penguin, so far has the book fallen I couldn't find a shot of the original jacket-- white, as I recall...

Billionaire's Book Club

BILLIONAIRE BOOK COLLECTORS

Seeing lists of billionaires in magazines, I speculate about how many of these men (they usually are men) collect books. Andrew Carnegie ('Man of Steel') who appears to have been worth today's equivalent of $100 billion gave away a large part of this fortune to build public libraries. But did he collect books? Alot of wealthy men endow libraries and colleges and may have a 100 yards of fine leather bindings but do not actually collect books or care very much for them. The only recent moguls I have heard of that collect books are Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Fred Koch and the late Paul Getty, Malcolm Forbes and James Goldsmith. Hopefully there are a few more.

Forbes ('who dies with the most books wins') was a collector of many things but books were a passion. Gates is, apparently, well read and collects manuscripts (eg the Leonardo Codex.) In an interview he refers to Scott Fitzgeralds' lines at the end of 'The Great Gatsby' about the green light*--an apposite image for him. He is so keen on Fitzgerald that he is known in some circles as 'The Great Gatesby.' 'Tender is the Night' is his favourite.

Getty was, of course, a fabulous collector and photos of his temperature-controlled English Country house library can be found in a 1990s glossy book about celebs and their book collections (Keith Richards, Nicholas Barker and other intellos.). He is said to have bought the $7 million Caxton Chaucer incunable that was auctioned a few years back, possibly to go next to his Kelmscott Chaucer (vellum, 1 of 3 copies.) At one time he was a considerable buyer of Pre Raphaelite books and manuscripts, with a taste also for William Blake. Such books are now beyond the grasp of mere millionaires. Fred Koch (oil) was always mentioned in the salerooms when any Nineties highspot came up--Wilde letters, Dowson holograph poems etc.,. He was also, reputedly, a heavy collector of livres d'artistes, a category he may have tired of, as many of these appeared to come back to auction in the mid 1990s. He is also a keen collector of original photos (see our piece below on the El Morocco album.)

James Goldsmith was reported as having upwards of 50,000 books at his mansion near Acapulco. He collected, among other things, travel books. Paul Allen collects Science Fiction (known to collectors as SF not Sci-Fi) especially artefacts. He probably has a set of Daleks. Andrew Lloyd Webber, probably a dollar billionaire, collects PRB -obviously a rich man's tatste. Jimmy Page, just a millionaire, but with more fans than all the billionaires put together collects Aleister Crowley, alchemy and the occult. I once met an old party at a book fair who told me he was a 'Huntingdonaire' - he bought some T.E. Lawrence and indeed his cheque went through. Some research on the net revelaed that his family were at one point very serious book collectors buying up several vast Country House libraries from England and shipping them to the California sun - billionaires of yesteryear.

Some of the Russian billionaire oligarchs are said to collect books and they, or their gofers. occasionally turn up at auctions, especially house sales, and cause a nuisance by outbidding everybody for finely bound, mostly illustrated, books. The fictional billionaire book collector and occultist Boris Balkan in the biblio-movie 'The Ninth Gate' pays seedy book runner Dean Corso (Depp) to track down an ancient text called "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" which is supposed to be able to summon the Devil himself.

My favourite wealthy collector was the late Maundy Gregory (pictured above.) He was not a billionaire but had in the 1920s what amounted to a licence to print money. He sold honours, a profession that has made a comeback in the Blair years. For £10,000 (about $1 million now) he could get you an earldom; knighthoods were a bit cheaper. You could, in fact, sign a cheque to him in your expected new name--only cashable when you assumed the title. He liked rare books, especially the works of the fantastical Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo.) In some cases (according to AJA Symons in 'Quest for Corvo') he would pay his agents to track down supposedly unfindable books, money no object. In the case of one particularly difficult book his agents hunted down the original printer, long defunct, and found four mint copies in a cellar. One wonders how much money it would take to track down a copy of James Joyce's first book 'Et tu Healy' (no copies known) or 'Questions at the Well' (Ford Madox Ford under the name Fenil Haig--only copy known was in the British Museum but has been stolen.)

I expect we will hear more of Maundy Gregory, at one point suspected of murder, in the coming months as the new 'cash for honours' scandal unfurls. On that subject - Blair, the poodle, is the only Prime Minister ever to have his collar felt while in office. As they say in France - 'Je m'en fous.'

* 'Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'

Vanity Fair

Today's piece is not about Thackeray or the thrusting Becky Sharp but the vanity of writers. I will cover the book some time. Basically the 1848 first edition is worth between £500 and £1000 in a decent rebind with heading in rustic type on p.1, woodcut of the Marquis of Steyne on p. 336 (later omitted), & with the reading "Mr. Pitt" on page 453 (later "Sir Pitt"). Quite a bit more if a sharp copy in original publisher's cloth.


Above is a poster for the 1957 cult noir 'The Sweet Smell of Success' where Burt Lancaster plays a monomaniacal newspaper columnist (allegedly based on Walter Winchell.) Writers are naturally vain and a little self obsessed - try thinking of a modest writer. You need an extra large measure of self belief to write and even more to attempt to get published. However there are certain writers whose egotism goes way off the Richter scale. I remember once talking to Graham Greene (apologies for name dropping, but he talked to a lot of booksellers, he was at one point considering book dealing as a trade but his career took off). I was in a bookshop looking at a copy of of Jazz and Jasper by the writer William Gerhardie whom GG had known and admired. Greene said that Gerhardie's egomania was such that you could praise him for 2 hours but, if after that you offered some very minor criticism, you were immediately thrown out of his house. I have heard the same said of Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie. His ambition as a young man was to be the most famous writer in the world, something he may have achieved for a short time but not quite in the way he had intended.

Even a prodigiously talented writer like Vladimir Nabokov was famously immodest with scarcely a good word for any other writer--Dostoyevsky was 'a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar' - he regarded Pound as a 'total fake' --Kafka, Mann, Faulkner, Lorca, Balzac and Forster also excited his scorn. Roald Dahl, among modern writers, stands out as easily the most egotistical, his self regard was so great that it was regarded as a kind of natural marvel and people went to see him to wonder at it. Jeannette Winterson, as far as she is able, has made fun of her own narcissism often voting for her own books in those Christmas 'Books of the Year' lists. Gertrude Stein is on record as saying something along the lines of 'there's Chaucer, there's Shakespeare, and then there's me...'

V.S. Naipaul is said to be high up there but when we met him to buy some books he seemed relatively modest for a writer. Cool guy. Likewise Jonathan Miller ('this charming man' as far as I was concerned) often regarded as well arrogant.
Greene appeared comparatively unassuming, unlike his brother Hugh ('did not tolerate fools gladly' said the obituarist.). Possibly when you get as famous as Greene, when every post brings letters full of fat cheques, you can let go of the self admiration.

The vanity of authors is not restricted to the great or the famous - even hacks are possessed by it. I encountered a bloke, the author of a minor company history who was holed up in George Whitman's' writer's room at Shakespeare and Co., in Paris (any writer would do until a name came along ) the chap, Irish as I recall, thought of himself as on a par with Samuel Beckett. Talking of George W, writers of Beatnik books (often seen there) are usually major league bigheads. Hard to explain. Even a demonstrably bad writer like the completely uncollected Melvyn Bragg is known to have immense self regard, almost off the Egometer scale, but so many writers and media folk need his approbation that you will seldom hear a bad word about him.

Writers who have never even published a book , poets usually, can be almost insane with self admiration and full of loathing for the 'crap' writers who seem to have made it. Martin Amis (in my opinion a great writer, but probably insufferable ) wrote a compelling study of envy, self regard and bitter literary rivalry in 'The Information'. First editions of this work, by the way, can still be bought fine in jacket and signed for £10.

Simon Raven recalls hanging out with Gore Vidal and Isherwood in California; surprisingly Gore does not come across as above average arrogant, unlike Herr Issyvoo who could only exist on a diet of constant praise. Raven mentions E.M. Forster, of whom Vidal reported that he was annoyed about the outbreak of World War 2 - because it stopped people thinking about him and his work. Of course the writer who hits 11 on the Egometer is the worst of them all, the unfortunate William McGonagall, the so -bad -he's- good poet who regarded himself as an equal of Shakespeare. He achieved great fame however and must be considered (apart from Robbie Burns) Scotland's most famous poet.

As Louis Menard said of his fellow writers gathered at the Procope in 'Reveries d'un Paien Mystique' (Paris 1876) '.. le Diable prend souvent les auteurs...par la vanité.' Our picture shows Joseph Connolly, a not unamusing writer and ex book dealer, who has just written his annual article about modern first editions for the Daily Torygraph. Humility is not one of his problems.

'Naff Puffs' & The New Snake Oil Salesmen

'Naff' is a Briticism meaning tasteless, tacky, crass, clichéd, insipid - the US equivalent is probably 'cheesy' or 'uncool'. Etymology obscure, possibly obscene. A 'puff' is sales patter, to 'puff' = to publicize with often exaggerated praise. Thus a 'naff puff' is a tacky and overdone sales pitch; there are plenty of these in the new world of bookselling in cyberspace.

I talked about a new breed of dealer the other day in the piece about J.K. Rowling's ''Chamber of Secrets." They are shameless over promoters of their own wares not dissimilar to barkers outside clubs or snake oil salesmen of the Wild West (left.) They have always been around but the web, especially ebay and the book malls, is littered with them. Some typical patter:-

'Sure to soar in value and a wonderful investment...would make a lovely gift for someone or for yourself...Your book will come with a certificate of authenticity from me promising it is real' ... 'It is a privilege to place this, at least for the moment, on our bookshelf of distinguished literary works here in the gallery...providing the astute collector with high quality books for years of pleasure and at the same time a great investment... A handsome addition to any library. ..for the fan and collector in your life...'

An email from a reader alerted me to a dealer's puff which must takes the biscuit. Basically the geezer has a rebound first edition of Kipling's Jungle Books listed online. Desirable but not at all scarce and like most books that have just come from the binder it is in excellent condition and handsome; however for this guy it is one of the supreme books in the history of the universe and he really wants to sell it:-

'This is the most stunning example of The Jungle Books you will ever find...These are the true world first, 1st edition / 1st printing hardbacks from 1894. The books are stunning. Here beautifully preserved with all original plates and illustrations throughout. Each book is individually bound by the Cottage Bindary in beautiful full Royal blue Leather. Incredible 24kt gilt hand tooling to the front and rear boards...(alot of stuff about gold lining)...The spines have five raised bands each with individual gilt compartments and the author`s name and title of each book in 24kt gold. They have full gilt edge papers and gilt spoted head & tail spines. The inner boards are tripple gilt lined with matching marble end papers... in a beautiful matching leather and cloth slip-case which again has gold hand tooled finish. The set are very very rare like this and both books are in perfect condition...One of the finest collections of Kipling`s most famous works in the world. This is the most beautiful presentation of this book you could ever wish to own. A simply wonderful true first edition two volume set bound by one of the world's greatest hand binders... this stunning set. '

Note the naff spelling. Below is an example of a way over the top 'squizz' binding (Kipling's Recessional) that you could actually talk up a bit. Our 'barker' above would probably self implode with hyperbole.




It is calligraphed in gold by George Sutcliffe (1878-1941), illuminated in medieval style by Alberto Sangorski (1862-1932), and bound in a jeweled red morocco binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Britain’s foremost art binding firm during the early decades of the twentieth century. The Sangorski Omar Khayyam which took 2 years to bind - with its 'gold leaf blazing and the light flashing from hundreds of gemstones studding the tails of the peacocks on the cover' - went down on the Titanic and by all accounts made the above look like --well, a Jungle Book from the Cottage Bindery...

'A handsome addition to any library. ..for the fan and collector in your life...'

Dogs I Have Known

Current Selling Prices
$1.75-$1400 /£0.80-£720

Slow-selling, common used books are often referred to (with a curse) as "dogs." The biggest dog in Britain has to be 'The Scallop' published in 1957 by Shell Oil Company. It is an attractive 4to book dealing with the iconography of the scallop and would be quite valuable if it were not so incredibly common. Copies were sent to every Shell shareholder and were (possibly) given out at petrol stations.

In England one can still come across shops with 5 or 6 copies. I have seen it priced anything from £1 to £15. Other unsaleable books include works by Thomas Armstrong, F. W. Bain, Ann Bridge, Thomas B. Costain, Galsworthy, Francis Parkinson Keyes, Donn Byrne, C. E. Montague, Walter H. Page, Cecil Roberts, H. M. Tomlinson, Morris West and Humbert Wolfe (although his 'Circular Saws' is always wanted as the d/w is by Evelyn Waugh).

Also worth avoiding are Donn Byrne, Lloyd C. Douglas, the American novelist Winston Churchill (not to be confused with the British Prime Minister), Howard Spring & Frank Yerby. In the USA, Rod McKuen heads the list, I am reliably informed.

THE SCALLOP. 'Studies of a Shell and its Influences on Mankind' was first published in 1957 the most expensive copy on the web is about $130 from a chap on the shores of Lake Michigan, there are 310 copies for sale at ABE and the cheapest, in no worse condition that the most expensive, is $2. This is from someone in the seaside retirement town of Eastbourne in Southern England. By the way it never had a jacket but can turn up in a slip-case.

It is just as useful to know what doesn't sell as to know what is hot and it can save you time and money. Will post more on this, including doggish subjects, sort of Cave Canem. Things change - Virginia Woolf's dog book 'Flush' used to be a howling dog in itself but is now desirable because VW's books have become so valuable. Robert James Waller's books have become desperately common and very hard to shift and I expect someone like Louis de Bernieres will be a future dog but it's a hard thing to call.



Avoid F. W. Bain whose books (slightly dull early 20th century Indian mysticism, often in vellum) look so promisingly expensive when you first see them but are, sadly, a very hard sell. Titles like :A Digit Of The Moon, The Great God's Hair, A Draught Of The Blue, An Essence Of The Dusk, An Incarnation Of The Snow, The Ashes Of A God, Bubbles Of The Foam, A Syrup Of The Bees - often from Riccardi Press. Neophyte dealers buy them because they look fancy, occasional vellomanes pick them up, he has a few followers and some madmen reprinted his works this century but they are as slow as molasses. Prices on the net range fom $1.75 to $1400 and there are over 700 Bains on ABE alone. Plenty on ebay as Buy it Nows that appear never to get bought now or ever, amen. The bane of my life, as it were.

Cruel month for Baedekers and other plans...

Among the books I am thinking of doing in the cruellest month are a Baedeker or two, 'A Lume Spento' a great Pound rarity, the Book of Buttons, a photo book by skull-capped fashion snapper Bruce Weber, a Hull Grundy anatomy book of fiendish rarity, a LeFanu ghost book, a weird conspiracy book Imperium: The Philosophy Of History And Politics (1948) by Varange, a disturbing photobook by Chris Killip 'In Flagrante' and an 'Aggie' - possibly Roger Ackroyd + that rare book stalwart Sir Winston Churchill, possibly one of his elusive pamphlets like 'Mr Broderick's Army' or 'For Free Trade.' Maybe 'Chamber of Secrets' for the muggles punters and Rodenbach's Bruges-le- Morte for the whey faced decadents. Don't hold me too it. I have a formidable stack of books that I have to price with a pencil and put in boxes- so blogs may be intermittent, but not for long. Talking of Baedekers and Pound, when he was in Venice in 1907 he made a little walking around money writing the entry for Venice in the 'Baedeker für Kinder' that was published exactly 100 years ago today - to the day. The "Baedekers for Children" (or 'Baby Baedekers' as they are sometimes known) have become rare and are often overlooked as they are half the size of normal Baedekers and are pink rather than red...

Mad Hatter Syndrome

I've been looking for a name for the phenomenon referred to a few days back with Lady Liza Lizard - a the book that became more expensive in web listings as the condition got worse. I wrote: 'Sometimes you get a perfect vertical gradation where there are, say, 6 copies each more