Dennis Wheatley's Library 2

More on the incredible Dennis Wheatley collection - acquired and catalogued by Blackwell's of Oxford in 1979. Things have changed in dealing and collecting in the 33 years since - as said before Blackwell's give no description of the condition of dust jackets -yet these, in current money, add several hundred thousand pounds to the value of the collection. Autre temps, autres moeurs. Some books were priced at a hundredth of their current value, whereas the purchasing power of the pound has only risen by a factor of four since 1979. However there are some books in the catalogue which are worth no more than was paid or have only doubled in value which in real terms means they have halved - if you get my drift.

Blackwells put heavy prices on 'roastbeef' (as Driffield used to call it) i.e. leather bound sets, old travel books, illustrated books ( Rackham, Russell Flint) and especially on the hyped up limited edition multi - volume works of the 1920s (Navarre Society, Medici Society, Peter Davies, John Rodker) which now clutter up the web and are firmly in the descendant. He appears to have bought most of these through the good offices of Percy Muir. To be fair the sets were often exquisitely bound ('turquoise morocco'...'tulip-ornamented panels in gilt'...'crushed victrix blue morocco') but would you want to pay £900 (now £3600) for a 25 volume set of the works of Stanley Weyman? Meanwhile for £110 you could have bought a 9 volume set of the works of William Hope Hodgson published between 1907 and 1921. A curious set of what appear to be first editions in 'original quarter white cloth' but surely worth £5000 or so.

Many books have Wheatley's handwritten note (usually on the front flyleaf) of the use to which the book was put by him, e.g. in a 1924 Medici Society limited edition Homer (illus Russell Flint) he has written "Used by me when writing my book 'Mayhem in Greece'. Dennis Wheatley." For his Roger Brook historical thrillers he appears to have consulted at least 50 of books in his collection. These notes and his bookplate generally enhance the value, but it is hard to say by how much.

A punter with occult powers of foresight could have spent £1000 on books in this catalogue and would now be able to realise £60,000 or more. However a less fortunate and slightly plodding buyer could have spent £1000 and find that he might only just get his money back, representing a loss of a cool £3000 on his investment. In my next posting I will go through some of the highlights (several Crowleys inc a jacketed, signed 'Drug Fiend' with ALS at £150, an early jacketed Hammett, a fine signed Well of Loneliness for £15 etc.,) and a few disasters. Hear is a taster - a signed presentation from Anthony Powell of Hearing Secret Harmonies. This bears an intriguing inscription 'I fear I rather trespass on your own territory here...Tony.' Was Scorpio Murtlock inspired by Gregory Sallust?



P.S. Many thanks to the Dennis Wheatley Project for the pics.

Dennis Wheatley's Library

This incredible collection, rich in modern first editions, was acquired and catalogued by Blackwell's of Oxford in 1979. The venerable company did not quite 'get' modern first editions at the time and there were many bargains. Later they cottoned on to them and started asking higher prices than most dealers in the field. The condition of dust - jackets is not described and as late as the 1950s jackets were often not mentioned even if present. In Wheatley's case they were often fine but to not describe them seems amazing to the modern sensibility; they are the sine qua non of such collecting.

It is said one of the big orderers on the first day was the late Chris Radmall, one of the champions of the jacket in his boutique like shop in Covent Garden, London 'Bell, Book and Radmall.' Between Covent Garden and Santa Barbara the cult of the modern first, with its emphasis on condition and jackets, was busy being born. John Baxter in his Pound of Paper says that Radmall would have been equally at home in Carnaby Street and the (dust) jackets in his window were objects of beauty in themselves.***

The reasonableness of Blackwell's prices can be demonstated by looking on the net now for books that have Wheatley's bookplate. He had stuck them in the majority of books, usually in the version pictured above. Of the 2274 books about 60 have found their way back to dealers and are on ABE (there are doubtless more, but with the bookplate not noted by inept mom and pop operations etc.,) Many have risen in price by 20 or 30 times while the retail index has gone up about 4 times since 1979, but to be fair a lot of books, especially modern firsts, have outperformed these figures. A jacketless U.S. first of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms was listed at £80 - it has subsequently acquired a jacket and a dealer in Mobile, Alabama wants a not unreasonable £2400 for it. For £15 you could also have bought the 1929 UK first of Hem's great novel in the distinctive Lee Elliott dustwrapper - not uncommon but now a fairly easy £600 in fine/fine condition.

Some books from this cata have re- emerged with their jackets now actually described. Wheatley's signed copy of Eric Ambler's The Night Comers (1956) which was £12 has found it's way to bohemian Mill Valley in California where £420 is needed - the jacket is described as near fine with 'only the most minor wear to the extremities' and it is noted that the price is not clipped-- price-clipping was not much of an issue in 1979 and is not mentioned anywhere in the catalogue. The dealer notes 'this copy belonged to fellow master thriller author Dennis Wheatley (ornate bookplate).'



The bookplate by Frank Papé, whom Wheatley knew and collected, is a curious item. I had always thought that the centaur figure on the left was G.B. Shaw, but in fact it was W's mentor Gordon Eric Gordon-Tombe, murdered in sordid circumstances in 1922. At an auction in 1985 a dealer bought a 35,000 word manuscript by Wheatley that reveals he knew that his charismatic friend was a fraudster, orgiast and thief. He had fought with him on the Western Front and he used him as the model for the pre- Bond hero Gregory Sallust. Talking of Bond there are no Flemings in the catalogue, possibly due to some animosity ...

One of the most startling item in the catalogue was in the first entry - 'the only extant whole copy of the torn-up photograph' in Who Killed Roger Prentice? (1937). This was in the very collectable crime series of crime dossiers consisting of facsimile documents and clues (burnt matches, cigarettes, train tickets etc.,) in little envelopes and the murderer's name in a sealed envelope. This was part of a 55 volume set of his own collection of his works sumptuously bound by Sangorski preserving the jackets (laid down) with the manuscript of one work ( Of Vice and Virtue) and a signed letter from Winston Churchill. All for £4500.

More to come-- including an examination of changing tastes in collecting. For example Blackwell's put £6 on a Charles Birkin's Devil's Spawn (1936) signed to Wheatley and fine in a jacket. At a 100 times this price the book would probably last less than a minute on the web in 2011. Some of the 2274 books however are now worth the same or less than they were priiced at 33 years ago...but not many.



*** Baxter also says that Chris Radmall launched the night-club Annabel's with his pal George Harrison, in fact it was a short-lived club for posh and beautiful persons called Sybilla's. Possibly George helped out.

Graham Greene. Brighton Rock, 1938.

Graham Greene, BRIGHTON ROCK. Heinemann, London & Viking, NY 1938.

Current Selling Prices (in jacket) £10,000 - £60,000/ $16,000+- $100,000

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Greene's most famous and most valuable book. A note of caution, the value lies almost entirely in the jacket of the British (Heinemann) edition, not wearing jacket £500 is the maximum. The US edition is worth a fraction of the UK edition but has a more striking jacket. The artwork is by the revered graphic designer George Salter who was known for his multi dimensional images. The rarissimo British d/w is pinkish - mimicking the colour of the British candy known as 'rock.' Wiki defines it as '...a tubular boiled sweet commonly sold at tourist (usually seaside) resorts in the UK...with a pattern embedded throughout the length, which is often the name of the resort where the rock is sold.' It is not unknown in Australia and even the Danish resorts of Løkken and Ebeltoft have their own rock.

A recent theory is that Greene got the idea for the book from watching the Jean Gabin movie Pepe le Moko which he had reviewed in early 1937. Greene wrote - 'I cannot remember a picture which has succeeded so admirably in raising the thriller to a poetic level.' Similarities include smiling villains and the trivialisation of murder and betrayal. The Brighton trunk murders of 1934 and the crimes of the racecourse gangs who created havoc in Brighton during the 1930s are said to have been an input, also he had stayed in Brighton and responded to its seedy and violent undercurrents; in the novel he was exposing what he called 'the shabby secret behind the bright corsage.' Brighton ('London by the Sea') still has a louche and sordid side to it, although possibly less palpable than in GG's day. Keith Waterhouse, a former resident, said that ‘Brighton has the air of a town that is perpetually helping the police with their enquiries.’ A re-make of the film has just appeared starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough & Helen Mirren. It is set in the moddish 1960s, plays up the religious elements and is said to be pretty good.


The first of Greene's overtly Catholic novels. Orwell said that they put forward 'the idea…floating around since Baudelaire, that there is something rather distingué in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class night club, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only, since the others, the non-Catholics, are too ignorant to be held guilty.…'

The 1948 movie has cult status. Richard Attenborough, the original lovey, is unforgettable as the baby faced psychopath.



VALUE? About 4 years back there was a pretty nice jacketed copy of the 1938 UK first that went from book fair to book fair at £50K. It seems to have eventually sold. An unpleasant ex library copy in jacket sold on October 2009 at £11,000 (Dominic Winter.) The US first in a great jacket with wraparound band has made $3000 but decent examples can be had for less. At the Sotheby's sale of the library of an anonymous but obviously well heeled 'bibliophile' in October 2010 a copy made a staggering £70,850 ($110,000). It was described thus: '... original red cloth stamped in gilt, original pink dust-jacket, cloth folding box, some slight spotting along edges, short tears to edges of jacket (one at head of lower cover with some slight loss), neat repairs to lower hinge of jacket...very good condition.' A fine copy is unlikely to show but on this form could make £100K. It represents the greatest disparity in a modern first edition of value with and without jacket. In the recent Sotheby's case it works out the book is worth 140 times more with jacket. The only other 20th century book I can think of that is close to this sort of disparity is The Hound of the Baskervilles, possibly The Maltese Falcon.

PROOFS? Someone emailed about proof values. They can vary alot. In the late 1980s there was a vogue for them and prices surged but the market quickly ran out of steam. Proofs were then looked upon by dealers with mild disdain except in the case of major works or controversial books and banned items. Typically they are plain and uninteresting in appearance. Ebay has slighly revived their fortunes but they are tricky and don't tend to hold to consistent patterns of value.



I sold a proof of Brighton Rock about 10 years ago for circa $4000, not in wonderful condition. They are not impossibly scarce. At first I was excited by it, but found there are almost no changes with the proof and the hardback first- Greene's period anti-semitic tone is retained (passages like '...he had been a Jew once, but a hairdresser and a surgeon had altered that...' and references to Jewish women as 'little bitches') although it was later expunged. The only difference is that Brighton is spelled Brihton on page 77 and one letter of damaged type has been repaired on page 13. Substantial differences would have made a substantial difference to the price- a good rule with proofs. Rock on.

Stamboul Train. Graham Greene. 1932

Graham Greene. STAMBOUL TRAIN. Heinemann, London 1932.

Current Selling Prices
$4500-$7500 /£3000-£4500

The first of a series of 'entertainments' by Graham Greene, the prominent writer of modern first editions. Not a scarce book even in a dust jacket but seldom seen in sharp condition. A very nice copy turned up last week at Gorringe's auction rooms in leafy Lewes, Sussex and made £4500 + their 22% (a somewhat greedy commission for a provincial auctioneer.) A thriller set on the Orient Express from Ostend to Stamboul, fraught with Greene's trademark style of unease and sleaze it deftly handles issues of racism, anti-semitism, lesbianism, communism , fidelity and faith. GG wrote of it in his introduction to the 1974 edition :

"In Stamboul Train for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film. The devil looks after his own and I succeeded in both aims."

The movie Orient Express was probably not a roaring success, I can find no stills from it, no poster and no contemporary reviews.

There is a 'point' on the book that is seldom invoked. J.B. Priestley, at the time a much bigger fish than Greene, alleged that one of the characters, a writer called Q. C. Savory, was a defamatory representation of himself. On pages 77, 78, 82, 98, and 131 the name is changed to Quin Savory and for some reason 'Dickens' was changed to 'Chaucer.' This occurs at line 2, page 82 and is a quick way of determining precedence--if you have one that says 'Dickens' it's drinks all round. 13,000 copies had already been printed and bound, and altered pages had to be substituted. Priestley had seen a review copy when he demanded the changes, and so it is possible that a few copies without the alterations escaped. The only copy I can find is a proof copy on the web right now at $7500 (which includes an unjacketed modest copy of the 1932 first.) There have been over 50 copies in auction in the last 30 years and none have been the first state. Several have been presentation copies including one from 2000 that belies the idea that this was GG's first entertaiment-- the (later) inscription reads ''For Martin, from Graham Greene. Not yet an entertainment!''. A manuscript showed up in 1964 at Sotheby's and was bought by the legendary dealer El Dieff (Lew David Feldman) for $1820. It is decribed thus:

"The Autograph Manuscript, with revisions and deletions, c. 135 pp., written on loose sheets of ruled foolscap, contained in a cloth box, folio. The title-page carries two "possible titles" besides the one actually adopted, viz. The Orient Express (the title used for the American edition) and Snow on the Line. The title-page also bears a proposed but cancelled epigraph from George Eliot (the published book has an epigraph from George Santayana), and the note "Begun Jan 2. 1932". Before publication (at proof stage) the name of one of the characters in the book was modified and some other changes were introduced to avoid a threatened action for libel."

A fabulous investment by now probably worth 50 times the sum that Lew paid. The description tends to indicate that the name changes were made before the book was published so it is possible Priestley saw a proof copy.

OUTLOOK? The Lewes result was a sort of world record for the book even allowing for inflation and would indicate that Greene is on the move. Certainly there were lesser Greene's at the auction making much higher sums than they are currently available for on the web; ironically A Sense of Reality made £122, but can be bought at ABE for £45 fine in fine jacket. Results such as this could just be down to auction fever. The early books in illustrated jackets are likely to increase in value. Movies, TV series etc., could also push them up. Greene is unlikely to do a Galsworthy, but bear in mind there is a lot of it about and some early titles (eg The Man Within) are quite common even in super condition. A painfully optimistic Canadian dealer wants $11500 for his 'fresh' copy but another Man Within described as fine with a signed laid in card is available with a major dealer at $2500. The trouble with the book is that the jacket is not illustrated and it is surprisingly common for a book that was only printed in 2000 copies as a first. The seller does however point out that the title comes from Sir Thomas Browne - "There's another man within me that's angry with me."

Ian McEwan. First Love, Last Rites, 1975

Ian McEwan. FIRST LOVE, LAST RITES. Jonathan Cape, London 1975.

Current Selling Prices
$600 - $1000 /£400-£700

MODERN FIRST EDITION
A serious and collectable first edition from one of the big players in the 70s Brit pack of novelists--the others include Barnes, Amis and Rushdie. The New Yorker notes;' It is now a commonplace that McEwan has edged past his peers to become England’s national author.' Movies are made from his books and he has gone from an edgy cult novelist to a mainstream, middle class favourite--is he heir to the mantle of Nigel Balchin, Nevile Shute, C.P. Snow and J. B. Priestley or, as Martin Amis has suggested, a new Conrad ? If the latter then his current prices may rise in time and his early works may be, as several dealers put it, be 'ones for the vault' or 'the pension fund.' Talk of pension funds however usually indicates desperation, or that the price is too high now but you merely have to wait a few decades for a gilt-edged payoff.

First Love, Last Rites, a collection of eight short stories begins with a tale of incest -a boy so intent on losing his virginity that he settles on his sister. Further themes of sex, perversion, and the grotesque run through the stories, three of which have been filmed. Comparisons were made at the time with Roald Dahl, one story 'Solid Geometry' was especially fancied. The New York Times came up with painterly comparisons - "Ian McEwan's fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico's city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb."

VALUE? It is hard to find copies in fine jackets for much less than £700 and you may have £1000 for a fine signed copy. There was a well attended signing shortly after publication at the Royal Society of Literature. OUTLOOK? Hard to call--probably good but not spectacular. Most of his books are fairly easily found, he is unlikely now to write a staggering masterpiece--a Magic Mountain or a Lolita or Decline and Fall- his works are said to be becoming very slightly duller. He is unlikely to do a Cormac and appear on Oprah, but movies may lift his prices. He could become the new Graham Greene in terms of collectability, but it seems unlikely. Buy modestly priced copies and hold until death or dotage. His best book is said to be The Child in Time which can be still be bought realtively reasonably.

Although never exactly a bliss-ninny McEwan was something of a hippy with the usual mystical baggage (and even according to Amis several kaftans) and often pictured in a three button hand me down and Lennonish specs. In this century he has fervently embraced rationalism, finds belief in God and the hereafter dim-witted, even abusive and hangs out with Christopher Hitchens (author of God is not Great, I am.) In going into the mainstream, the solid novel researched to within an inch of its life, he has vastly broadened his fanbase and there are those who feel his early works, now relatively scarce, should be priced as if he is a colossus of literature, one seller wanting £8500 for a fine/fine signed first of First Love. Book collectors are remarkably tolerant--if an ice cream seller wanted $25 for a lolly or a gas station $50 a gallon they would be hounded out of town by a braying, bloodthirsty mob. Possibly such dealers are prepared to wait a lifetime for prices to catch up or for a plutocrat collector to lose his mind and hit the buy button. Peter Howard always told me never to criticise another man's prices, because there may be something you don't know about their situation, Driffield used to say there was 'no statagem too strange' for a book dealer to use.

TRIVIA. Three years ago, McEwan culled the fiction library of his Fitrovia mansion. Instead of calling in a nearby bookseller he and his younger son handed out thirty novels in a nearby park. In an essay for the Guardian, McEwan reported that “every young woman we approached . . . was eager and grateful to take a book,” whereas the men “could not be persuaded. ‘Nah, nah. Not for me. Thanks, mate, but no.’ ” The researcher’s conclusion: “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.”

J.G. Ballard. The Atrocity Exhibition, 1970.

J. G. Ballard. THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION. Cape, London & Doubleday New York, 1970.

Current Selling Prices
$300-$9000 /£200-£6000

MODERN FIRST EDITION
A re-post in hommage to and in memory of J.G. Ballard who died on 19/4/09. Will Self claimed (with a few caveats) that JGB was the most significant post war novelist. I second that emotion. Certainly in terms of knowing what was really going on (and often well before it happens) he was the supreme figure-- his novels and short stories have demonstrably foreshadowed global warming, environmental disasters, the grotesque rise of celebrity culture, science parks, 'retail therapy', even the death of Princess Diana (Crash).


I have chosen his suppressed novel The Atrocity Exhibition because it was a breakthrough book in terms of shock value and also because it is his most valuable book by a long chalk. A 'stopper' for any determined completist. You need the U.S. Doubleday 1970 first. Most of the stories that make up the book had been originally published in the late 1960s in SF magazines (which, by the way, are rarely of value) others appeared in regular journals like Encounter, Transatlantic Review, etc., - also small change to buy. The first English-language publication was in the U.K. by Cape in 1970. The publication history is best told by Mike Holliday at the definitive J. G. Ballard - A Collector's Guide site. Basically Doubleday pulped the book due to what it perceived as obscene and inflammatory content.

The US 1972 Grove Press 'Napalm' edition is only worth about $50. The 1968 Brighton / Unicorn printing Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, a pamphlet, is worth nearly £1000 in the signed edition of 50 and about half that in the unsigned edition of 200. There are now 3 copies on the web. The 1990 Re/Search signed edition of 400 gets priced between £200 and £400. The UK first in its surreal jacket (below) can be found between £100 and £200. Note that the red lettering on the spine of the dust jacket of this edition is particularly prone to fading and unfaded copies are prized.

A serviceable copy of the US rarity in a chipped and nicked jacket is has been on sale for the carefully considered price of $10, 900 for many moons (2 years ago it was $11,900). Collectors have their limits. It is obviously howling rare but it is just possible more escaped the pulper's tank than was previously thought. Ballard mentions 'signing one or two copies that somehow escaped the Doubleday thought police.' SF overlord (pace George Locke) Lloyd Currey reckons there are ten copies around*. The rarity of pulped, seized and 'disappeared' editions can sometimes be overstated - vide the 3rd edition Ulysses where 499 of 500 were said to have been seized and destroyed by customs--there have been at least a dozen of those in commerce in living memory. We had one in the late 90s from the widow of a douanier on the Kentish coast. If copies of 'Atrocity' are going to surface New York is the place. In the late 1990s we cleared 3000+ books (mostly novels, mostly file copies) from Doubleday's London office, sadly 'Atrocity' was not among them. One thing I noticed about Doubleday in bulk is they are not sturdy books and do not generally wear well, also the jackets are thin and frail so fine/fine copies are very difficult.

* His exact words were - 'If I recall correctly, I've sold a total of four and they all came from publisher employees or reviewers. Frankly, I don't think there are too many out there. ... I would guess there are somewhere between 10 and 25 copies extant. Number depends on how soon the order to stop distribution came down from Nelson Doubleday. Doubleday, in those days, sent out a fair number of review copies, at least 25 and sometimes more.'

Quest for J.D. Salinger 2

Does the death of a great author affect his or her value to collectors? In some cases the author's values (and reputation) can take a dip with the person not around anymore to fight their corner--this may have happened in the cases of Mailer, Updike and even Bellow. Harold Pinter's prices have not been helped by his Nobel Prize, his demise or even a superb London production of 'No Man's Land.' Movies don't necessarily help either even with Oscars thrown in. In the short term with Salinger there is now a fast sale of lesser items and some modestly priced books that had been around for a while have at last started to shift. The online mall ABE record January sales of a decent Catcher in the Rye at $8000 and an amazing $6500 for his Nine Stories (1953). Catcher can make into 5 figures for impressive copies but Nine Stories must have been an exceptional copy or some punter, in his grief, hit the Buy it Now button and swallowed the price. Otherwise high end and overpriced Salinger firsts, some of which have been around since the days of Dubya, are not selling any better than usual.

Very ordinary items that would not normally sell have been getting goodly sums--the first paperback in less than limpid condition garnered a flukish $200. At least two 'signed' reprints of Catcher with not even an attempt to provide provenance have made $500 and someone somewhere is laughing, hopefully buyer and seller--authenticity seems to count for less across the pond than in Old Europe. The first UK of Raise High the Roofbeams sans d/w made $100--the kind of book normally you wouldnt give a fiver for. A very ordinary first UK (Hamish Hamilton) Catcher made $998 this week. Touted as an investment, it was in a slightly unpleasant chipped d/w but Fritz Wegner's fine cover was pretty much intact. This used to be a £300 book in better condition but is now on the move as it seems to be desirable to American collectors. However in general the lesson is that It is unwise to buy shortly after an author's death...

Far gone chancers on Ebay are trying to sell Salinger related dotcom domains, one seller barks PREMIUM DOMAIN FOR SALE! WWW. JD Salinger Secrets .COM --SINCE HIS DEATH THE WEB HAS BEEN BUZZING! CASH COW!!! They need $25000 or best offer. Another optimist wants a modest $4999 for InMemoryofJDSalinger.com. Talking of dotcommers the greatest cache of Salinger letters to ever get near the market, letters to his young lover, the petite horizontale Joyce Maynard, were bought by the American inventor of a hugely profitable computer anti-virus software programme – he promptly made them over them over to Salinger as a gift. A quixotic but (from a dealers point of view) dull and painful gesture.

Yet more riveting trivia emerged in obituaries and tributes. The ghastly Mark Chapman was not the only assassin inspired by Catcher-- John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book. Julian Knight, perpetrator of the infamous Hoddle Street massacre was said to have read the book also. As for the paperback shown above it turns out JD didn't like Jim Avati's illustration. Avati reported:

'...he didn't like my cover for Catcher in the Rye. In fact, he resisted the very idea of having artwork on the cover. One day he came to the NAL offices to complain about it. We went together into a little room and I said, ‘Come on! These guys are doing the selling, they know how to sell.’ But he was very reluctant. At first, his idea was to have something less realistic, more the printmaker's look. But since that was impossible - he was not yet a known author - he wanted something more sentimental. The carousel in the park, you know...'

As for the vexed issue of the genesis of the name Holden Caulfield, Joyce Maynard (not especially liked by Salinger diehards) says that he got it from a movie marquee hoarding for the Joan Caulfield and William Holden movie Dear Ruth (1947). The problem is that Holden Caulfield is mentioned in Salinger's short story Last Day of the Last Furlough in the July 15, 1944 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, three years before Dear Ruth , but the Caulfield name, including a mention of Holden, appears as early as the unpublished 1942 story The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.

Wyndham Lewis - Anglosaxony 1941

Wyndham Lewis. ANGLOSAXONY - A LEAGUE THAT WORKS. Ryerson Press, Toronto 1941.

Current Selling Prices
$1200-$1500 /£750-£1000

MODERN FIRSTS / POLITICS
The pages of Viz magazine are the last place one would expect to come across that famous photograph of the enfant terrible Wyndham Lewis smoking a cigarette, but there he, in a recent issue, in a mock ad for fags, unidentified by name and described ludicrously as a ‘fop ‘.Viz has always had a sophisticated readership ( the late Tory MP Alan Clark was one subscriber ) and so I expect that quite a few Viz readers would have recognised the photo of the thirty-something artist-writer, if not the description of him.



I feel the mocking, rather surreal, often puerile, and always mischievous, humour of Viz would have appealed to the author of the 'Apes of God' and 'Tarr', who was always good for a well-aimed swipe at the pretensions of pseudo-intellectuals and the inanities of pop culture. And now, it seems, after decades of comparative neglect, Lewis is in danger of becoming cool. The revival seems to have started in 2000, with the publication of Paul Edwards’ magisterial critical work and Paul O’Keeffe’s equally brilliant biography ( which features the famous fag photo on its cover ); a well received exhibition at Olympia was followed in 2007 by another at his old school of Rugby, and last year an acclaimed exhibition of his portraits at the NPG attracted a record 38,000 punters. Now the Net seems suddenly teeming with Lewis posts covering not only his art, which has always been admired ( Brian Ferry and David Bowie are collectors ) but also reassessing his hitherto neglected writings, which although condemned by Martian poet and Bill Oddie lookalike Craig Raine as ‘ unreadable ‘ are perhaps ( if some of the postings are to be believed ) finding a new, young audience.

Although, despite being amazingly prolific, Lewis never made much money from his writings, mainly because his books were printed in small editions. Consequently, all titles are hard to find, at least in the UK. It didn’t help that some titles were suppressed before publication or, in the case of 'The Doom of Youth', burned by order of the court as libellous. Around 350 copies managed to escape the flames, but the title remains a rarish, if not particularly sought after Lewis item. More worth looking out for is the booklet Lewis wrote while reluctantly exiled in Canada during the Second World War. Copies of 'Anglosaxony—a League that Works', which the small Ryerson Press in Toronto published in 1941, are as scarce as female readers of Lewis—which is a pity, because it is one of the writer’s most interesting publications. In it he condemns the Fascism he had flirted with a few years earlier and set outs in orderly fashion all the points in favour of British democracy, including its electoral system, the tolerance of Britons and the political advantage the UK has as a sea power. The ‘ pamphlet ‘ ( as Lewis called it ) was pretty well ignored by the newspaper press in Canada, despite the efforts of Lorne Pierce, the literary editor at the Ryerson Press. A follow-up book was submitted by Lewis to another publisher, but never published.

I’ve only ever seen one copy of 'Anglosaxony', and that was in the collection of the Canadian journalist and Lewis uberfan C. J. Fox , who had been smitten by the writer’s work as a teenager in the early fifties. Back in 1993 I had interviewed him about Grigson and Lewis in his tiny flat in Sydenham, where he proudly conducted me around his marvellous collection, which also included original artwork and letters. Only now has this resource found a permanent home -- at the University of Victoria, British Columbia ( which also has the Betjeman papers ).

It is not certain exactly how many copies of Anglosaxony were published, though the print run would probably have been small. Lewis was not well-known in Canada and it is likely that all those newspaper editors who were sent copies regarded the book as mere propaganda and therefore not worth keeping. Their descendants may be regretting this now. There is no copy on ABE at present , though a recent reference work on Modern Firsts values the book at £750. Lewis himself asked for an advance of $50 ! [R.M.Healey.]

Thanks Robin--from a purely commercial point of view Lewis is (imnsho) risky--he goes in and out of fashion, some of his 20s and 30s works are common even in jackets (he was a greatly collected author in the days when Rota, Bell Book and Radmall and Serendipity ruled the roost.) Good to hear he is coming back however -- as one reader says at Amazon 'Make no mistake, the guy was a fascist and a raging misogynist' but he was most certainly not a fuckwit like so many collected authors sold by the newer modern first gang.

As for fascism, as Robin notes, he changed his mind by 1941. His Paris based novel 'Tarr' is a good start if you are minded to dip into him - a book high in the modernist canon for its attack on English individualism, its jagged Vorticist style, its punctuation--another Amazon reader recommends it as a 'beach read' warning however that it will 'somehow manage to kick sand in your face.' Lewis revised the book twice but the 1918 original is the goods. He was a great and prolific painter and his pictures used to occasionally turn up underpriced. As for his puce monster BLAST (1914) I have a customer for both issues in good shape. Ship and bill.

Le Carré - Call for the Dead (1961)

John Le Carré. CALL FOR THE DEAD. Gollancz, London, 1961.

Current Selling Prices
£4000+ /$6000+

MODERN FIRST EDITION / ESPIONAGE
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...in fact I dreamt of a fine/fine 'Rebecca' and a shelf full of Gollancz first editions all pristine in their yellow jackets. Orwell was there, Dorothy L Sayers, Gibson's 'Neuromancer', Larry Niven's 'Ringworld', Daphne's even more valuable book 'Jamaica Inn' ...a bunch of early Michael Innes, Visiak's 'Medusa', a 'Lucky Jim'', Charles Williams, Edmund Crispin, Kafka and the first two Le Carré's--with a few signatures and the odd loosely inserted autograph letter a 3 foot shelf of the top titles in fine condition would be knocking on a six figure sum in dollars and with luck even pounds sterling.

Near the top of the list is 'Call for the Dead' Le Carré's debut novel with Smiley as a sort of antiBond figure-- unstylish, plodding, cuckolded. This suspense novel was runner-up for the first prize in the British Crime Writers Association awards for 1961. Plot summary: "A murder passes for suicide . . . A bereaved wife is forced to hide her grief . . . A master spy challenges a favorite pupil to a lethal duel . . . ". Penguin blurb: "John Le Carre's taut, coiled tale of cold-war espionage set in foggy London and introducing a hypnotically fascinating hero, George Smiley, short, fat, and unobtrusive-by all outward appearances a far too ordinary man to be what he really is: a top intelligence officer on the trail of the most fiendishly clever spy ring ever to operate out of East Berlin." Le Carré is now regarded as 'one of the half-dozen best novelists now working in English' (Scott Turow.) Interestingly the special spy language used in the books has apparently been adapted by MI5 itself where it was not used already - lamplighters, dead drops, moles, one time pads, pavement artists etc.,

VALUE? There are a lot about. A decent inscribed copy sold last month at Bloomsbury for £3300 + commission and can now be found listed at £9000. It has made more several times in auction without a signature - £8000 at Sotheby's in 2000 and £5900 (In repaired d/j with minor soiling, unsigned) in 2002. While there are a lot for sale at the moment no one is breaking ranks and the lowest price (a modest example but with a TLS loosely inserted) is £4500. A seller in South Africa (something of an epicentre for silly prices) wants £20000 for a very fresh example from his own collection. He also wants to see extra postage ('Courier Service only for this item.') Beware of dealers selling their own collections.

Another seller at a vertiginous £15K+ for an unrestored but not fine copy suggests that the book would make a very good long term investment. Possibly true if you bought last month's auction copy, but at this price you might wait until well beyond the 2024 Olympics just to get your money back. In fact when a bookseller suggests a book is an investment it is an almost infallible sign that it is not. The book market is notoriously hard to predict and an author who is sexy now may go flat before long. Patrick O'Brian has not gone ahead for several years, the R.D. Wingfield market has become flaccid, John Fowles tanked in the 1980s, Durrell is treading water and even Robert Graves is not the man he was etc.,

OUTLOOK? Le Carre's first two books are always going to be hard to find and a perfect copy could nudge into five figures especially when some optimism returns to the market. The yellow Gollancz jackets are thinnish and prone to wear. Auction records suggest that the book is in a gentle, possibly temporary, decline. His second book 'A Murder of Quality' is a better read and scarcer but not as valuable and may prove a better bet. The consensus is that he has not produced a great book since the 'Constant Gardener'; most of his books beyond the first three are very common (even signed.) Worth noting is the fact that the jacket of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' remained exactly the same for about 10 printings-- this is sometimes turned to advantage by fiendish dealers who marry them with jacketless firsts or upgrade lesser copies. An almost undetectable ruse--as they say in Russia--'not caught, not a thief.'

Joseph Heller. Catch-22. 1961.

Joseph Heller. CATCH-22. Simon & Schuster, NY 1961.

Current Selling Prices
$2000+/ £1500+

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Yossarian has to be one of the greatest characters since Oblomov etc.. The book is on Anthony Burgess's list of 99 best modern novels, a more reliable list than Waterstone's or Richard and Judy. There is an issue point on the jacket, you want a price of $5.95 and definitely no blurbs on the back. Blurbs are useful for spotting reprint d/ws (e.g 'Dead Cert' by Dick Francis) but are not infallible, sometimes the book is sent out in proof and when praise is forthcoming blurbs are printed on the first state jacket (e.g. Spy Who Came in From the Cold.') Trivia-- book was originally Catch 18 but Leon Uris's Mila 18 came out and title had to be changed, J.H. based the plot on the Iliad with Achilles as the inspiration for Yossarian.

VALUE? Not especially scarce but fine/ fine copies seem to command close to $3000 and sometimes more for almost faultless copies. Not rare signed as Heller did many signings for later books, early 60s presentations are less common. The U.K first ed (1962) in its attractive green jacket used to be buyable for a few hundred quid but a respectable dealer (not one of the usual deranged overpricers) wants $4000 for a nice but not stunning copy. It would now be hard to find a limpid example for less than a £1000. There is a point on the green jacket --the first issue carries on the lower panel an excerpt from the book which was soon to be replaced by American reviews.



OUTLOOK. Book has risen in value over the last 18 months. It may now have levelled off and may dip slightly. A remake of the movie might help. Books whose titles have entered the language are generally a good bet. Imnsho one to hold.

Barred (Jean Rhys)

Edward de Neve. BARRED. Desmond Harmsworth, London 1932.

Current Selling Prices
$1000 +/£600+

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Something of a sleeper and undeniably rare, so hard to find that I am not especially concerned about awakening it. It is so rare that it has no real currency. The kind of sleeper you don't want to be blabbing about is one that can be fairly easily found and quickly and quietly converted into real money. Our copy, at the somewhat 'greedy bastard' price of £750 is the only one on the web and is described thus:

8vo. pp 255. Said to be mostly written by Jean Rhys from her husband's (Jean Lenglet, sometime Langlet) Dutch language manuscript. A noted rarity. Original publisher's black cloth lettered red at the spine, covers slightly rubbed, slightly scuffed at spine ends else very good sound copy. From the library of Norman Douglas with a note in pencil by him on the front endpaper 'Belongs to N.D.'

The price, which I shall eventually reduce, is taken out of the air and owes some of its weight to the connection with 'Uncle Norman.' In a jacket it should be worth well into four figures.

Posted on Face Book (or 'My Face' as my aunt calls it) is this game offer: " I will marry anyone who can tell me what these books have in common. Quartet by Jean Rhys...The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford...Barred by Edward de Neve...Drawn From Life by Stella Bowen." This posted by a not unattractive twentysomething party houndette--well dearie marry me 'cos I know. 'Good Soldier' is by FMF who was a lover of Jean Rhys while he was also living with Stella Bowen who wrote about it in 'Drawn from Life' and Jean Rhys distraught but empowered turned out 'Quartet' (NY 1929, published in UK as 'Postures' in 1928.) 'Barred' also covers this triangulation, not to say quadrangulation. (Pic of JL and JR to the left.)

Jean Rhys translated 'Barred' from the French edition Sous les Verrous which literally translates as 'Under the Locks.' The book is dedicated to her and seems almost a plea for her return. Rhys cut over 6000 words and it is said there is hardly a paragraph where she hasn't changed something, she was after all il miglior fabbro. Ford, unaccountably attractive to women, also wrote about the affair in 'When the Wicked Man' (said to be 'virtually unreadable') also it is covered with some resentment by Stella Bowen in 'Drawn from Life' (1941) - she describes the members of the boho Paris crowd around FMF when he was editing 'Transatlatic Review as either 'dirty, drunk, a pervert or a thief or a whore...'

The book also might be sold as a prison novel, a genre for which there is a lively bunch of punters. In late 1924 Lenglet (aka Edward de Neve) was arrested for embezzling money from the travel firm he was working for. He said that he had borrowed the money to do a deal, but the deal had failed and he was unable to replace the money before its absence was noted. A classic excuse, but it did not save him from a prison sentence in the inaptly named Santé prison. This left his wife destitute - when Bowen and Ford took her in she was down to 3 Francs and as SB notes '...(she) possessed nothing but a cardboard suitcase and the astonishing manuscript (of)...an unpublishably sordid novel of great sensitiveness and persuasiveness...'

OUTLOOK? I have a feeling that Jean Rhys will at some point go up in value due to her Caribbean origins, the drama of her life and loves, her sheer talent and power and the fact she seems to still have some resonance even with the callow web3 generation. Another translation of hers, Carco's 'Perversity' (NY: Pacal Covici, 1928) is listed at $2500 for a decent copy in jacket. Well over twice what it should be (imnsho), but an interesting book as the translator is given as Ford Madox Ford but it is now known to have been entirely JR's work. Ford had involved himself in the translation project to such an extent that both Carco and the American publisher, Pascal Covici, thought Ford himself was the translator. The seller says: 'Rhys in this century is beginning to look like one of the truly great 20th Century novelists...' If he is right then prospects are good, but bear in mind that apart from the very rare 'Barred' and possibly her first book 'Postures', her books are not at present especially scarce.

Faulkner. As I Lay Dying, 1930.

William Faulkner. AS I LAY DYING. Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, New York, 1930.

Current Selling Prices
$2000-$8500 /£1000-£4500

MODERN FIRST EDITION
You want the first edition, first issue (with the initial "I" on page 11 'dropped below the line' i.e. not correctly aligned). You also need the preferred binding, with the stamping on the front cover away from the top edge and complete and intact (unbroken.) If you have these and a clean copy in a real nice jacket, well over $5000 is achievable, the second state about half that. Apart from a troubled sojourn in Hollywood writing screenplays, Faulkner spent most of his writing life in Oxford, Mississippi. In later life he was a serious drinker - sometimes drunker 'than a 100 Indians dancing in a cornfield' as Capote puts it. He went to Paris in the 1920s but was never part of the expat crowd like Hemingway. This novel, because it is told from multiple view points in a stream of consciousness style is often said to be influenced by Cubism.

His acquaintance with Cubism is well documented. While in Paris in 1925 he stayed near the Luxembourg museum where he saw many contemporary paintings of Manet, Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Cezanne. The critic Panthea Reid Broughton claims that 'As I Lay Dying' is the 'quintessential cubist novel' with its 'repeating geometric designs -- lines and circles, verticals and horizontals -- Faulkner actually facets, like a cubist painting, the design of this book. That is why it is so difficult to speak of theme in As I Lay Dying. Here we have a work of fiction that comes remarkably close to being an exercise in pure design...'

The title comes from Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey, where Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." It is also notable for its varying chapter lengths; the shortest chapter in the book consists of just five words ("My mother is a fish".) Faulkner wrote the novel in six weeks without changes on a table fashioned from a wheelbarrow while working the 6PM-6AM shift at a coal-fired power plant. The stuff of legends.

OUTLOOK. Reasonable, Faulkner is still taught and is a big part of many American literature courses. His prose style is much admired and he is a giant in the literature of the South. His books are often good looking and are highly uncommon signed (apart from the signed limited editions.) They appear to be holding their own, a decent first state copy made just over $10,000 ay auction in 2007. The British edition of Pylon (1935, see below) is especially handsome in its jacket and can fetch over $1000. The fact that he won the Nobel Prize in 1949 also helps, although a lot of mediocre and forgettable writers have also won the prize.

John Banville. The Sea. (2005)

John Banville. THE SEA. Picador, London, 2005. ISBN: 0330483285

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

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Classic Booker prize fodder, romped away with the prize in 2005. One of the great prose stylists of our time who also turns in very decent detective fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. Julian Barnes did this under the name Dan Kavanagh and notably one of the MacSpaunday poets Cecil Day Lewis wrote several highly collectable thrillers under the name Nicolas Blake. 'The Sea' concerns an art critic, a not especially likeable character, returning to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from the recent loss of his wife and confronting a distant trauma. Critics have called his prose 'hauntingly beautiful' and the book 'an extraordinary meditation on identity and remembrance. Utterly compelling, profoundly moving and illuminating, it is unquestionably one of the finest works yet from a sublime master of language.' Don de Lillo wrote 'Banville writes a dangerous and clear-running prose and has a grim gift for seeing people's souls.'

This is not the most valuable of Banville's works by a long chalk - 'Long Lankin' (1970) and 'Nightspawn' (1970) can command over £300 each. However the book is on the rise, as are many Booker winners, with a solid and growing bunch of collectors of this genre. There are less of them than, say, collectors of the New Naturalist series but many of them not only collect winners but also shortlisted books and many are frightfully well off. Some of these runners up are are highly elusive and worth many hundreds of sovereigns--Terence Wheeler 'The Conjunction' (1969) Gordon Williams 'From Scenes Like These' (1969) Penelope Fitzgerald 'The Bookshop' (1977) and Elizabeth Mavor 'The Green Equinox' (1973.) Patrick White, John Fowles and John Le Carre have refused to have their books entered for it, John Berger gave half his prize money to the Black Panthers. One winner- J.G. Farrell -denounced the prize from the pulpit, and, disgracefully, the overtalented Martin Amis has never won it, while the unexceptionable Midnight's Children has become Booker of Booker of Bookers.

VALUE? It is said that 3500 copies were printed, many probably went to libraries but it is still not scarce. Fine copies of the first can be had for £40, signed copies at twice that. A limited edition of 56 signed copies in blue cloth with beige paper labels was put together by Irish literature specialist Joe McCann and can command fancy prices like $800. Outlook? Likely to be good, Banville is Irish which always helps, he is limbering up to be a grand old man of letters, he has fiercely loyal followers and you can get invest in him for as little as £40. His signature is not scarce but signed works by him tend to be desirable. His Benjamin Black books are also worth a punt--he tends to sign these 'B. Black.'

Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita, 1955.

Vladimir Nabokov. LOLITA. Olympia Press, Paris, 1955. (2 vols)

Current Selling Prices
$4000-$10000 /£2000-£5000

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Fossicking about on YouTube I found an interview with Nabokov from the 1950s with Lionel Trilling and a bow-tied presenter. Trilling vigorously defended 'Lolita' as a great love story and VN, urbane and surprisingly modest, occasionally spoke -always referring to his trademark Boston file cards. In the 1960s, with nymphet money pouring in, he took up residence on the sixth floor of the Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland and started his 'greatest living writer' act. Certainly it is hard to think of a greater writer alive at that time, with the possible exception of Jorge Luis Borges. A fellow dealer specialising in highbrow lit proclaims that the most important writers of the 20th century are Borges, Kafka, Joyce, Proust and Nabokov -he refuses to accept a sixth writer, John Buchan, who I thought might provide some light relief.

The quest to get 'Lolita' published is well known. It is said there were 5000 copies of the first edition. A friend, now a venerable book dealer, worked for Maurice Girodias, the book's publisher in Paris, during the 1950s. He used to bring them over to the UK to sell for a premium as a filthy, banned book. British Customs officers had been instructed by the Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. He recalls trips where he failed to sell all copies and rather than return with them he had to abandon copies in bus stations, phone boxes etc., ( some of them were reprints, no one much cared at the time.) It's not especially scarce, but very hard to find in sharp, unmolested condition- you want a price of "Francs: 900" price on the lower back corner of both volumes to have the first state.

VALUE? A copy sits on the web in fine, bright condition at $15000. I have seen nice but not fine ones sell for £5000. Auction records reveal very healthy prices for signed copies especially those with some associational resonance. At Christies New York in 2002 $265,000 was paid for a slightly worn copy inscribed to Graham Greene with the customary drawing of a butterfly. The story of this copy is dealt with in an earlier piece. When the book was published Greene had told Nabokov that "in England one may go to prison, but there couldn't be a better cause!" A copy of the 1958 US first from 1958 inscribed to his wife Vera made $160,000 in the same year. On the subject of defective books (see yesterday's piece) a copy of the Paris first with 'some pages blank between 129-60' made $100 in California in 1984.

Last year a copy of the Russian edition presented to his wife with whom he collaborated on the translation was 'bought in' (i.e. it failed to sell) against an estimate of $200,000 - $300,000. The inscription, in cyrillic, read "To my Verochka | October 1967 | Montreux"), beneath this Nabokov had executed a spectacular coloured drawing of a butterfly labelled "Colias Lolita Nab. | [female]", and signed his name using three different permutations ("V. Nabokov | VL Nabokov | Vladimir Nabokov"). Effectively it was the dedication copy as the printed dedication is to Vera. It was housed in a black morocco clamshell box by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, the upper and lower covers and spine onlaid with numerous butterfly designs in turquoise, dark blue, violet, mauve, yellow and silver morocco, incorporating mother-of-pearl and gilt, intertwined with flowing design in poussiere d'or (flaked 24ct gold), the spine lettered ''Lolita'' in Russian in rainbow colours (echoing the jacket design), the interior of the box lined with blue velvet. No one raised a hand to bid, possibly those oligarchs who collect books want something in a flashier box.

Outlook? Nabokov is never going away, he is not John Galsworthy or even John Fowles, and successive generations will discover his wonders - so prospects are good. At the highest end he can be a little risky- the above is not the only 'buy in'. Copies of Lolita have to be very clean, shabby copies are worth 20% of great copies. It can be seen rebound at about £1000, but the Olympia Press green wraps have an erotic and forbidden charge about them which it is a shame to hide.

TRIVIA. In Feb 2008 bedroom furniture for little girls with the brand name 'Lolita' was withdrawn by Woolworths UK after pressure from parents. Nobody at Woolie's had heard of the book, Nabokov or even the movie. There is a perfume called Lolita Lempicka which cross-pollinates the nymphet with the doomed Deco painter, and also a range of shoes from the Far East (see below.) In the 1960s Nabokov wrote "I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow —perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings." Indeed there are pictures of pampered poodles called Lolita all over the web and in our post literate age the name will probably drift back into human use. Oscar was a no-no name for about 50 years after Wilde; the only name I can think of that is still verboten is Adolf and in England, possibly, Myra.

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck. THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Viking Press, New York (1939)

Current Selling Prices
$4000-$10000 /£2000-£5000




MODERN FIRST EDITION.
Tolstoyan novel with important social content. The book that won Steinbeck the Nobel prize. Basic plot is this - forced from their home in the south by the dust storms (Dust Bowl), the Joads, a family of 'Okies' are lured to California to find work; instead they find disillusionment, exploitation, and hunger. The Oxford Companion to Literature says that '...it articulates a life-affirming 'mystical socialism' and speaks eloquently for the concerns of the deprived and the dispossessed.' It sold nearly half a million copies in its first year of publication, although it had its detractors - Steinbeck was accused of everything from harboring communist sympathies to exaggeration of the conditions in migrant camps. The uproar drew the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt, who came to Steinbeck's defense, and eventually led to congressional hearings on migrant camp conditions and changes in labour laws.

His wife came up with the title -- from the lyrics of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" ("Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored... ") -- and typed up the manuscript as he wrote in Los Gatos. Los Gatos is now a chic town on the edge of Silicon valley, with about one restaurant for every 100 people and a shopaholics paradise, then it was a merely agricultural town. Both its bookshops are now closed. The one on the top corner of the main drag which was run as late as the 1990s by an old cove with a Jaguar is remembered fondly. Over the hill in populous Salinas (his birthplace) the John Steinbeck Public Libray was faced with extinction in 2005 (no money) but at the last moment the citizens of Salinas voted themselves a sales tax to keep the library and other city services funded for the next ten years. In Monterey , Steinbeck mementoes are everywhere and some of the canneries near the front have become antique markets - with the occasional bookdealer, always with shelves of Steinbeck. He is the California writer, the Beach Boys sang about him... (pace Jack London.)



VALUE? For serious money you need the original color pictorial dust jacket with jacket illustration by Elmer Hader with the $2.75 price and "First Edition" intact on front flap (sometimes called 'tab'.). A book that makes mega bucks with a good signature-in 2007 a copy in a used jacket inscribed to his sister Beth made $47000 ( ''For Beth with love John"). At the Rechler sale in 2002 a copy inscribed to Marshall Best (one of Steinbeck's publishers at The Viking Press) in an unknown jacket made nigh on $40,000. Inscribed copies appear online at $20000, some more, some less. Less, of course for copies that are merely 'flatsigned' - the meathead theory that a plain signature is better than an inscription doesn't work for Steinbeck -or any other writer. Without inscription the book has never made over $9000 in auction. Decent copies online appear to start at $10000 with an avowedly much better than fine copy decribed as 'immaculate in a non-price clipped pristine dust jacket' at $14000. The UK 1939 first edition from Heinemann in its crimson/ purple jacket can make £400 or so it tip-top condition. Outlook? Although Steinbeck is not Tolstoy this is a world classic and a book that will never go away - it should hold it's own through recession and depression.

TRIVIA. In 1917 Boyd Cable wrote a book 'The Grapes of Wrath.' Subtitled 'Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Private Soldier' it consisted of stories from the front in the First World War. Nice copies in jacket can be bought for less than $50. There are several books called 'The Wrath of Grapes' including a rare temperance book and a recent book about the wine trade. There are also wine bars with this name and a reality TV series "Corkscrewed: The Wrath of Grapes" which follows the trials and exploits of American Idol producers Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick as they make a major investment in a long held dream - owning their own vineyard. A 'must see' -a reality show about reality show people losing part of their wad on wine. Talking of drink it is said that Steinbeck, although fond of a bevy, was the only American writer / Nobel winner (apart from the deathless Pearl Buck, and the much later Saul Bellow) who was not a raging alcoholic. Below is the shack on Greenwood Lane, Los Gatos where he started the book: he finished it in the Santa Cruz mountains. After the book came out he wrote:

“The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. I'm frightened at the rolling might of this damned thing, It is completely out of hand ; I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children, 1981.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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