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 reaching over $12000 2 years back before it was withdrawn, possibly in order for the buyer to accept an unrefusable sum, possibly because it was found wanting in some aspect.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.'

Bruce Chatwin. In Patagonia, 1977.

"One never knows how to classify his books...Anthropological and mythological studies in the tradition of Tristes Tropiques , adventure stories looking back to our early childhood reading, collections of facts, dream books, regional novels, examples of lush exoticism, puritanical penance, sweeping baroque vision, self-denial, and personal confession - they are all these things together. It probably does them most justice to see their promiscuity, which breaks the mold of the modernist concept, as a late flowering of those traveler’s tales, going back to Marco Polo, where reality is constantly entering the realm of the metaphysical and miraculous, and the way through the world is taken from the first with an eye fixed on the writer’s own end." W.G. Sebald on Bruce Chatwin.



Bruce Chatwin. IN PATAGONIA. Cape, London, 1977.

Current Selling Prices
$550-$800 /£280-£400

MODERN FIRST EDITION/ TRAVEL
Cult travel book that used to be worth more than it is now. It is still highly rated and much collected and the cult of Chatwin shows no signs of settling down. The problem is that there are too many copies around; the print run of the first edition was 3000. It used to be a 'sleeper' high on the lookout list- often found for £2 to £3 in the travel section of provincial second hand book shops that had never heard of the great wanderer. The net has stopped that happening. Some critics have found his books somewhat overrated - he was known to physically attack critics who had given him bad reviews. Other writers known to set about critics include Stephen Berkoff, Richard Ford, Norman Mailer, Craig Raine and Stanley Crouch (who he?).

At a party given by the old Borneo hand Redmond O'Hanlon, Chatwin pushed and shoved a young critic and novelist who had written that 'On the Black Hill' was a lousy book. He was known to have little sense of humour, and is said to have had the slightly sad and spiteful air of one who had been bullied at school. Jan Morris said of him - "...as a person, he was decidedly too much for me. Snobbism, equally camp and genuine; showy connoisseurship of a quirky kind; the deadly energy of a raconteur; the insensitivity of the tuft-hunter; a gift for mimicry; sexual ambiguity of the Strength Through Joy kind (I can see him now, riding his bicycle blond and barebacked through Powys, for all the world like a Hitler Youth) - all these characteristics, distilled into one very clever, exuberant and apparently ageless being, made all too rich a mixture for an unsophisticated provincial." A copy of the book presented to her sits on the web at a considered £7150--at first glance a ridiculous sum but it is not totally unthinkable that it might sell, such is the strength of the Chatwin legend. This same copy went through Bloomsbury Book Auctions at £2600 (in 'creased, stained & sunned d/j') in April 2007. About 4 years ago we had a spectacular copy of 'Patagonia' which we catalogued thus:-

'8vo. pp 204. Map endpapers, frontis map and 8 pages of photos. Signed presentation copy to Prunella Clough. Chatwin has crossed out his printed name and written out his name in sepia toned ink and added ‘for Prunella with love B.C. 5 April ‘78.’ Prunella Clough who died in 1999 was a distinguished British School painter and the niece of the cult designer Eileen Gray. It was Eileen Gray who had given Chatwin the idea to travel to Patagonia at a meeting in Paris 1972 when she was 93. She died in 1976 and it is presumably through her that Chatwin knew Prunella Clough. $2800.'

Oddly enough this book is still to be found for sale at the online book malls (at $8000) but merely sold as a presentation copy to a 'Prunella' without any of our learned banter about Eileen Gray as the original inspiration. A shame, such is the power of Eileen Gray's name we were able to sell prayer books and children's books with her ownership signature. Put her with Chatwin and you have a win double.



VALUE? A copy made about £600, unsigned and in faded jacket last year but copies fine in jacket can usually be picked up at ABE at less than £400. A few years ago it was selling at book fairs for £700+. The spine has a tendency to fading so copies with unfaded, unsunned jackets can go for a premium. Outlook? It is just possible that Chatwin will be seen in the future as some sort of combinaton of Richard Burton and Robert Byron, in which case keep your copy in a closed and curtained cabinet.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner 2003

Khaled Hosseini. THE KITE RUNNER. Riverhead Books, New York/ Bloomsbury, London 2003.
ISBN: 0747566526 (U.K. ed) & 1573222453 (U.S. ed)

Current Selling Prices
$200 + /£100+

MODERN FIRST EDITION / AFGHANISTAN WAR
Beneath the all important first edition line for this book (it must be 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2) there is a summary, presumably for librarians, of the categories that the book fits into--they give a succinct snapshot of the books content:-

Kabol (Afghanistan)--Fiction. 2. Male Friendship --Fiction. 3. Social Classes --Fiction. 4. Afghanistan --Fiction. 5. Betrayal --Fiction. 6. Boys --Fiction.

It is in fact a world ecompassing epic tale of fathers and sons, of childhood friendship and betrayal, taking the reader from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the Taliban atrocities of the present. The final third of the book (which underwent some serious rewriting) is full of haunting images: a man, desperate to feed his children, trying to sell his artificial leg in the market; an adulterous couple stoned to death in a stadium during the halftime of a football match; a rouged young boy forced into prostitution, dancing 'the sort of steps once performed by an organ grinder's monkey.'

The book is said to have sold way over 500,000 copies without benefit of TV ads, Oprah or other celebrity endorsements. Its success was due to word-of-mouth recommendations of librarians and independent book sellers and especially the strength of local book clubs and community reading programs -where one book is chosen by a city or region. The ordinary reading public bought and read the book and passed on the good news. Gradually the book became a best seller, justifying the $500,000 advance. Khaled Hosseini, whose story is not far removed from the book, came from Afghanistan with his formerly wealthy parents at age 15. They ended up on welfare in Fremont, California--an area close by Silicon Valley known as 'Little Kabul'. Khaled became an M.D. (family doctor) but also began to write, rising at 5 a.m. working at short stories and, later, his novel, before going to work. A half-dozen stories, mainly thrillers or gothic horror tales, were published online or in experimental zines. But submissions to The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire and other mainstream publications were soundly rejected. After the success of 'Kite Runner' at 40 he became a fulltime writer, enjoying the American Dream - he has met the President and has seen the book made into a highly rated movie.



VALUE? I became aware of this book's collectability at the San Franciso Book Fair last weekend on seeing copies on the stands of dealers in hypermodern fiction. Several had the book in what looked like pristine condition and signed by Hossein in Farsi and English---the prices were between $600 and $1500. There are copies on the web priced at $1000+ with a couple of chancers at $2000+. Meanwhile last week a copy signed in English and Farsi and appearing fine was sold on Ebay at $189 and copies go through at around the $100 mark fairly regularly, possibly twice that signed and a little more with added ephemera like signing tickets etc.,

It is not a rare book, Hosseini has done several signing sessions, the first edition print run of the US first was 50,000. Copies can show up as first editions with a black remainder mark on the edge--these are best avoided or valued at considerably less than unspoilt firsts. By the way - the US precedes the UK edition by about 3 months although there is as yet no great difference in price--the US is marginally favoured. The outlook is good, fiction about this part of the world will probably become increasingly collectable--however the online dealer who referred to the book as 'ultra rare' was either sadly deceived or 'having a laugh.'

W G Sebald. The Rings of Saturn, 1998

W G Sebald. THE RINGS OF SATURN. Harvill Press, London, 1998. ISBN: 1860463983

Current Selling Prices
$1200-$1600 /£600-£800

MODERN FIRST EDITION / TRAVEL
Uncommon in hardback and valuable thus. However, you see ambitious prices on the simultaneous softback issue ('becoming increasingly difficult to find'). It even has an auction record with an unfortunate punter paying £190 for it at Bloomsbury in early 2004. It can now be found readily at a third of that price. The true first is, of course, the German 'Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt' which came out in 1995. It appeared there first in a numbered limited edition (999 copies bound in goatskin) published by Eichborn and seems to have completely gone to ground. There are no copies currently for sale although it turns up occasionally at auction in Germany. Locus Solus catalogued one of the 999 (unsigned) at $650 a year or two back -it was described as being in full leather 'as new in publisher’s cardstock slipcase...bound in vegetable-dyed full east-Indian goatskin of deep blue.'

VALUE? I have a feeling that although he wrote in German his books are more admired in Britain and America. At one point his books were making exceptional sums on Ebay and people wanted ephemera, posters, recordings and anything to do with his legendary walk from Lowestoft to Boulge. Inscribed copies of 'Rings of Saturn' are not impossible but are treasured--it is known that he would pore for hours over his translations, making changes and then when inscribing copies of books for friends, he would habitually add some further textual changes by hand.

The hardback is pretty scarce but not in the same league as, say, 'Trainspotting' which went only to libraries. The hardback appeared in bookshops but only a few hundred were printed--they seem to show up in East Anglia more than anywhere else. There are four on the web at the moment priced between £750 and £1300 with only a German first signed by him. A great read--it takes a very special kind of erudition to make Lowestoft fascinating. Sebald died in a car crash near Poringland in Norfolk age 57 - Tim Adams wrote this of him in 'The Guardian':-

'... It has often been said that, in his brief, marvellous career, Sebald, writing from East Anglia, invented a genre all his own. The substance of that originality was a new way of looking at what remains of long-gone objects, people and events. All his books were imaginative exhumations, but they were given a curious urgency by his inspired and restless intelligence. His writing made the dead seem like news.'

Above is a page from the German edition that was omitted from the UK edition - it has a photo of the house of a Suffolk farmer that Sebald dropped in on. The man had devoted the last twenty years of his life to building a scale model of the Temple of Jerusalem.

Iris Murdoch. The Flight from the Enchanter, 1956.

Iris Murdoch. THE FLIGHT FROM THE ENCHANTER. Chatto & Windus, London, 1956.

Current Selling Prices
$450-$1000 /£220-£500

MODERN FIRST EDITION
The entire text of this book can be found at Google Books, but the blurb (on the inside flap of the Edward Bawden jacket) is not there so I have laboriously typed it out as it sets the book in the time when it first appeared. Perhaps there should be a site that archives blurbs--as they are found almost exclusively on jackets they are not offered to the swarms of scanners beavering away for Google Books. It reads thus:-

Miss Murdoch follows up her extremely successful first novel, Under the Net, with one which is no less captivating. Here again is a large and lively group of characters: the ravishing, absurd young Annette who, after swinging on a chandelier, runs away from her finishing school to enter the School of Life, and learns a good deal more than she bargained for: the fierce and melancholy Rosa, the mistress of two Polish brothers: her brother, editor of a down-at-heel magazine: the scholar, Peter Saward, obsessed by an indecipherable ancient script: Rainborough, a civil servant, struggling in the toils of his determined secretary. Their lives revolve around the mysterious figure of Mischa Fox, a man who is not famous for anything in particular, just famous. Each of them has some person, idea, illusion or object by which he is possessed: each tries to break the spell, to flee the enchanter. The story moves through a series of episodes which are vivid and paradoxical as dreams. There are scenes of broad comedy- the meeting of the shareholders of Artemis is outrageously funny; scenes where comedy balances on the edge of tragedy; scenes where the normal suddenly deviates into the sinister, the beautiful into the grotesque. The Flight from the Enchanter establishes Miss Murdoch as a novelist of imagination, intelligence and vitality.

I have a feeling that in the future they will do some of her novels on T.V. as period pieces, like Mrs. Gaskell, but set in the existential 1950s with black polo necks de rigueur. On a fashion note Iris's memorable pudding bowl haircut was a 1950s thing popular among British female intellectuals (Doris Lessing had one) - the style was transmogrified into the more overtly sexual in the 1970s with Joanna Lumley as Purdy with her blonde pudding bowl haircut in the New Avengers. It is hard to put her novels into a particular genre, she is close to the 'novel of ideas' and puts herself widely in the realistic tradition of the Anglo-Russian novel.



VALUE? Most of Iris's output is very common and about 20 of her novels from 'A Severed Head' onwards can be bought for £10 and even £5 each fine/fine with her Booker winner 'The Sea, The Sea' as the exception at £50. The books were published in large print runs and there are simply too many about. However some of her plays, poetry and polemical works and signed limited editions can get into 3 figures. She is sometimes pushed as an Irish writer and 5 years ago several chancers had fanciful prices on common works but they very seldom sell for fat sums, in fact there has been a discernible flattening of her prices. She may well come back, especially her first 3 novels.

'Flight from the Enchanter' can be bought at between £300 and £500 in sharp condition, if you have a spare £8500 you can buy the copy that Iris gave to her husband, John Bayley, in 1956. The inscription ( 'John from Iris') is contained within a rough heart-shaped design and also says "to the big C from the little c". John Bailey wrote movingly of her in 'Elegy for Iris',(1998) 'She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world- the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction.'

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

Watching his right-wing speeches, in which he castigated in sneering tones the profligate, welfare-spending, bureaucrat-infested state government, I saw a more crude and ambitious figure, far closer to the brutal crime boss he played in the 1964 movie, The Killers, his last Hollywood role. In his commercials Reagan used the smooth, teleprompter-perfect tones of the TV auto-salesman to project a political message that was absolutely the reverse of bland and reassuring. A complete discontinuity existed between Reagan's manner and body language, on the one hand, and his scarily simplistic far-right message on the other. Above all, it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his mouth...

Ballard on Reagan. Re/ Search 1990 (Re-issue of 'The Atrocity Exhibition.')



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

Current Selling Prices
$400-$10000 /£200-£5000

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Ballard has been much in the British media in the last year mostly because of his new book 'Kingdom Come'. Melvyn Bragg, the adenoidal duff novelist, came to call for ITV and a respectful looking chap from the BBC also profiled the Sage of Shepperton. Both can be seen on YouTube. On ITV Will Self claimed (with a few caveats) that JGB was the most significant post war novelist. Certainly in terms of knowing what is really going on (and often well before it happens) he is 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).

There is a rumour in France that his superb novel 'Super Cannes' is to be filmed--when it came out in 2000 it was described as the first 'essential' novel of the 21st century. There have been rumours before - it was optioned in 2002 by producer Jeremy Thomas and director John Maybury with nothing doing so far. His new book 'Kingdom Come' was a slight let down and received flat reviews (although it has its fans and may read better decades down the line). One reviewer felt that Ballard, once so ahead, had been overtaken by events--' history has caught up and passed the old motorist, his late vision – of consumption as Fascism out of uniform, or at least as a precondition for the full-blown, full-dress kind – seems simultaneously unassuming and cranky.'

I have chosen '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.

"The first U.S. edition was to have been by Doubleday, also in 1970, but the entire edition was destroyed just prior to publication, with the exception of a few advance review copies and file copies. Senior management at Doubleday had taken exception to the contents, which included Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy. It isn't clear exactly how many copies still survive (perhaps around a dozen), but this is certainly the rarest of Ballard's books; there was a copy for sale in 2006 by bookseller Lloyd Currey for $7,500. In addition to the fifteen stories that comprised the Cape edition, Doubleday had included drawings by Michael Foreman, a dedication 'To the insane', and an interview with Ballard by George Macbeth (which had originally been broadcast on BBC radio, and which subsequently appeared in print in the book The New SF, edited by Langdon Jones). Had this edition been released on its scheduled date, then it would have been the first English language publication, preceding the Cape edition by one month.  

Following the pulping of the Doubleday edition, E. P. Dutton took the book up, but eventually decided against publication after advice from their lawyers. The first U.S. publication was therefore not until 1972 when Grove Press published the book under the revised title Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A., with a preface by William Burroughs. This edition went out of print fairly quickly, and the book did not reappear in the U.S. until 1990 when Re/Search brought out a large format, extensively illustrated, paperback edition. This reverted to the original title and retained the Burroughs introduction; it also added sidebar annotations by Ballard, as well as four additional pieces - three of Ballard's 'surgical fictions' from the 1970s, Princess Margaret's Facelift, Mae West's Reduction Mamoplasty, and Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty, and (rather incongruously) a story from the late-1980s, The Secret History of World War 3. At the same time, Re/Search brought out a signed hardback edition, limited to 400 un-numbered copies; or at least, that what it says on the limitation page ... but the copyright page says that it's limited to 300 copies. Odd! "

Thanks Mike! 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 no copies on the web. The 1990 Re/Search signed edition of 400 gets priced between £100 and £200 on ABE but can probably be picked up way cheaper at Ebay - also Re/Search themselves still have copies for sale. 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 currently on sale for the carefully considered price of $11, 900. 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. 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.

* 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.'

Cameron Crowe. Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1981.

Cameron Crowe. FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. A TRUE STORY. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1981.

Current Selling Prices
$200-$400 / £100-£200

MODERN FIRST EDITION
It is known that as preparation for writing his book, Crowe spent a year at Clairemont High School in Redondo Beach, California posing as a student. He was 19 but apparently freshfaced enough to pass for 16. This was done with the permission of the school administration and it allowed Crowe first hand exposure to American high school life of the early 1980s. The characters in the book and movie are based on real people and are uncannily realistic - it is claimed that all of the events described in the book actually happened. This is probably what gives the book (and the subsequent movie) its enduring appeal and differentiates it from other "teen angst" products of the time. Most memorable character was the permanently stoned, bong-addled surfer Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) who has now re-appeared in various incarnations and pastiches including Bill & Ted movies and the Saturday Night Live skit "Wayne's World," and its subsequent movies. The film and the book are not known outside of America but no one gives a toss.

VALUE? The book and the film may be becoming a little passé and certainly the book is making less than it did 5 years back--possibly because there is an over supply of copies. The classic common 'rare book.' It is on every part time bookscouts hitlist and a hardy perennial at Ebay. Last week a copy that appeared, from the sellers pics, to be without fault made $159 on Ebay and sharp copies never fall beneath $100 and some Herbert, not a million miles from Tennessee, wants $750 for each of his two near fine copies. Fine/ fine copies can be bought at ABE for $225 and there are about 30 decent copies for sale -some are described as 'very rare' and one as:

'Extremely rare and hard-to-find! Dj is nicely preserved in a brand new protective mylar plastic cover! Very very scarce! 253 very clean, unmarked and uncreased historical pages! Wonderfully well-preserved!'

TRIVIA. Cameron Crowe made the interesting but pretentious movie 'Vanilla Sky'. Of note is his commentary which can be heard in the DVD 'extras' - where he annotates and discusses the significance of ridiculous minutiae as if the movie were Citizen Kane or Battleship Potemkin. Good for a laugh.

TRIVIAL TRIVIA. A fantasy sequence in which Phoebe Cates exits a pool and removes her bright red bikini top in slow motion to the beat of The Cars' "Moving in Stereo" was probably the most popular section of the film. Many video store owners reported that returned VHS copies of the film had tracking errors during this scene.

Nicolas Cage appears in the movie under his given name, Nicolas Coppola.

George Orwell. Animal Farm. 1945.

George Orwell. ANIMAL FARM. A FAIRY STORY. Secker and Warburg, London, 1945.

Current Selling Prices
$1500-$5000/ £900-£2500


NOVEL / POLITICAL SATIRE / DYSTOPIA
The first edition of Animal Farm (4,500 copies) was delayed from May to August 1945 and was an immediate success requiring a reprint of 10,000 copies. Nota Bene the second edition is in exactly the same jacket and is quite common. It says 'Second Edition' high up on the flap (it can't be cut off and you can't be fooled by it ) and it is not a candidate for marriage. Possibly worth a couple of hundred bucks if real nice, many charge more but seldom get it. Always a bitter disappointment, because it's often very fresh. An enduring political satire on dictatorship and Communist ideology especially Stalinism. A world famous work, it still has bite and is even known to some teenagers. Prefigured by the likes of Candide (also short) and Swift's 'Tale of a Tub.' Unsatisfactorily filmed so far. Has to be a cartoon and one from, say, Pixar might turbo charge the books already high value.

I remember buying a whole lot of mostly indifferent books from the library of Sonia Orwell in the late 80s. The interesting thing about them is that many were presentations to George Orwell from as far afield as Brazil and Ceylon, some as late as fifteen years after his death. I remember the same phenomenom with a bunch of books from H.G. Wells' library, books were being sent to him as late as the 1960s. Both authors seemed to have enyoyed an odd sort of afterlife--news travelled slowly before the infobahn.

VALUE? Although a few persons want the unpleasant leathery Easton edition and some the US Harcourt edition, it is the Secker London edition that is most desired and has become quite valuable in nice condition (ie in a sharp green and grey d/w.) There are a plethora of grubby firsts around but nice jacketed copies command at least a grand Sterling, up to £3000 for beauties. The book is stiil on the rise having suddenly shot up around the year 2000. An intrepid ebay seller is selling the facsimile jacket for £15 and getting orders. Follow the flag. The US edition from Harcourt however must have been more like 450,000 copies and is worth less than the price of a hamburger dinner unless in exquisite condition. The one in black boards is a little better and some brave souls hold out for $100 +. Visiting Brits used to buy it until they saw one in every shop.

An interesting edition is the first Ukrainian edition of 'Animal Farm' Kolhosp Tuarin - it was published in Munich in 1947. Somebody found a box of them in the late 1990s and they were making £100+. All now seem to have sold. I described my last one thus:

'First edition in Ukrainian. Small 4to. pp 91. Pictorial wrappers--in pinks and reds, a striking image showing a gross, fat pig with a whip, and a horse in the backgound pulling a heavy load uphill.. With a 6-page introduction specially written by Orwell for this edition, and a full page photo of Orwell apparently contemplating a cigarette. In the 'autobiographical' introduction Orwell claims that he had been a Socialist since 1930 but during the Spanish Civil War he had considered considered fighting on the side of the Spanish government.The original manuscript has disappeared, but the introduction was retranslated back into English and included in ' Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters.' Wraps, about fine.'

Martin Amis. Dead Babies. 1975

Martin Amis. DEAD BABIES. Cape, London 1975.

Current Selling Prices
$350-$600 /£170-£300

MODERN FIRST EDITION
Margaret Drabble wrote in 1976 in the New York Times Book Review that 'Dead Babies' was '...about the nature of civilization, and the world it portrays is quite extraodinarily repulsive....a satiric book, written by a puritan, who, like that other satirist Swift, is deeply repelled by the normal functions of the human body as well as the more abnormal ones. Does it work, as a satire? On balance, it is probably too extreme, and its targets both too many and not sufficiently serious....Moreover, it is not at all funny. Its characters are so uniformly unpleasant that they are hard to distinguish. .. . It must be said that this book in its way is memorable. One might want to forget it, but it won't be easy." As I recall it was pretty funny. It is now grouped with Houellebecq's brilliant 'Atomised' ('Les Particules Elementaires') - a zeitgeist piece, an assault on the values of the Sixties and their disastrous effects etc.,

In the background of the novel is a shadowy terrorist group committed to murderous gestures - the Conceptualists. The book was filmed with Paul Bettany in 2000 (rated by some, hated by many, liked by Amis) with the group transmogrified into internet anarchists. Publisher's found the title distasteful and it was re-issued in paperback as 'Dark Secrets' but has since reverted to 'Dead Babies' -- a reference to outmoded and antiquated values and ideas.

Amis's father Kingsley accused his son of '...breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself...' and is said to have given up reading him and thrown the book out of a window when he came across a character in 'Money' called 'Martin Amis'. Recently Amis fils came in for a lot of bad reviews for his novel 'Yellow Dog' (to my mind yet another in a line of masterworks). He gamely countered with:-

'...no one wants to read a difficult literary novel or deal with a prose style which reminds them how thick they are. There's a push towards egalitarianism, making writing more chummy and interactive, instead of a higher voice, and that's what I go to literature for."

VALUE? Dealers trying to sell a copy of the book often claim this is his rarest novel, however although a better book, it is worth less than 'The Rachel Papers' his debut novel. Think £200 to £300 for a limpid example and £400+ for 'Rachel.' The one you really want with Amis is the foolishly trendy livre d'artiste ' The Coincidence of the Arts' (Coromandel, Paris 1999) a limited edition of 55, with prints by Mario Testino, signed by Amis and Testino. Russell values it at £2000 and there are no copies on any web bookmall. I want one.

TRIVIA. Amis and smoking. Amis was a serious smoker of Old Holborn (?) roll ups. Now as Professor of English at Manchester (with quite a bit to say about Islam) he may have knocked it on the head or switched to nicotine gum. He once claimed that without baccy his prose style would change , even conceiving a fag free opening line such as 'It was a baking hot day...' In 'The Information' he says of the protagonist '...he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette.’ Pic below of the alternatively titled Panther paperback, faultless copies of which can command a tenner. Amis's current publicity over Islam and his feud with the Spart-like Terry Eagleton is probably adversely affecting his first edition prices. From a dealer's point of view the best kind of author is a recluse, a 'fiercely private' enigma, one who follows the advice of Serge Gainsbourg - 'Sois riche et tais-toi.'

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994.

Louis De Bernieres. CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN. Secker and Warburg, London, 1994 (ISBN: 0436201585)

Current Selling Prices
$400 - $700 /£200-£350

MODERN FIRST EDITION
The story of a peaceful and remote Greek island (Cephallonia) impacted first by Italian occupation and then German and communist forces during World War II. A huge hit that inspired incredible loyalty and devotion among its champions. Top lovey Richard Eyre declared that he could not love someone who did not like the novel and handed out copies to all his actors at the National etc., House prices in Cephallonia climbed steeply -- how many novels can affect the housing market? Some were less enthusiastic, one wag called de Bernieres 'the new Paul Gallico' and some were underwhelmed by its prose and plot or put off by it's magic realism schtick. Certainly it was made into a forgettable movie, poorly received by critics and the general public - the NY Post called it 'a howling dog'. It was also described as '...one of the year's most embarrassing big-budget miscalculations'. It cost $100 million to make.



VALUE? A 'netblown' book. It has made as much as £900( $1850) in auction (June 2001 Bloomsbury) but can now be bought in the (presumed) first state white boards and fine in jacket (sometimes even signed) at no more than £300 ($625). It was a question, as always, of supply and demand--too many copies were printed and when it was selling for £500 they just kept surfacing until the punters were no longer around to buy it at that price. The crapness of the film didn't help. Even Louis didn't like it. The amusing thing is that there are still dealers trying to get £700+ for the book and they almost always insist that it was made into a great movie, a palpable hit e.g. this blagueur "...the film, starring Nicholas Cage, was a great hit a few years ago, and is still one of the benchmarks for romance and war movies."

In 2007 about 5 copies have appeared at terrestrial auctions making from £110 to £334 with an average of about £150--the high result was from Edinburgh where there may be a lag factor--it is not uncommon to see good prices made in the provinces for books that have died in London. Possibly somewhere titanic bidding battles still break out for Tombleson's Rhine and bound Art Journals which in London now get lotted with a dozen other books.

TRIVIA. Last year, the book received a mauling at the hands of the communist daily 'Morning Star.' Accused by Andrew Murray, former spin-doctor to the transport union leader Bill Morris, of writing a book of "the most crude and brazen anti-communism" and being an "apologist for the excesses of the right in Greece", the seriously riled LDB lashed back giving as good as he got. "How long are you people going to sit in the dark in an air-pocket, wanking each other off?" de Bernières demanded to know in a reader's letter. "Your ship has sunk, brothers," he declared, adding that he was "delighted to receive a hostile notice from your paper". Rave on, it's a crazy feeling.

Gerald Kersh. Jews Without Jehovah, 1934.

Gerald Kersh. JEWS WITHOUT JEHOVAH. Wishart & Co., London, 1934.

Current Selling Prices
$650-$1000 /£320-£500

MODERN FIRST / NOVEL/ JEWISH HISTORY / SUPPRESSED BOOK
Gerald Kersh's first book. London writer with a good and enthusiastic collector base, some of his books (esp the short stories) have fantasy elements and are noted in Bleiler. He lead a fairly rackety life, sometimes 'in the cush' from movie deals etc., but often broke or pursued by the taxman. We catalogued a small archive of of his letters and books (bought in auction at Godalming, Surrey in 2000)- the description gives some idea of the writer, it is written by our occasional cataloguer Martin Stone:

10 autographed letters, 26 typed signed letters and 1 telegram, with envelopes, 1000 words plus in toto, 1946 - 1965, London, Mexico, West Indies, and Canada, all to an infatuated female admirer (married). The first 11 letters unfold heated postal flirtation, with Kersh’s sometimes hesitant priapism occasionally bursting free: “Just received the lock (sic) of girdle of chastity - just you wait”; “Naturally you’re frustrated my lamb! Is such an elegantly - organised concatenation of flesh, blood, nerves and sensibilities made to caress itself in day - dreams”; “We’ll probably meet soon and make love to each other, or something” etc, etc.
Despite the primary carnal thrust of these letters, Kersh manages to discuss a number of other matters less at the forefront of his mind - a tussle with an octopus off Barbados, the sending of bogus billets - doux on dirty postcards to the editor of “The People”, who had published unflattering photos of him; his work in progress, problems with the taxman, etc. The final letter, 15 years later, has a more formal tone, although a carbon - copy of a long adulatory letter by his admirer makes clear she remains available.
Together with two original signed and inscribed photos, somewhat creased and worn, and three signed and inscribed books: Brain and Ten Fingers: Heinemann, 1944, 1st edition. Cloth rubbed and marked, good+ (amorous inscription.) Faces in a Dusty Picture: Heinemann, 1944, 2nd edition. Hinges cracked, cloth worn: about good only.An Ape, A Dog and a Serpent: Heinemann, 1945, 1st edition. Cloth worn at edges, damp spotted; good only. An amusing and illuminating archive of one of the prime-movers of the school of modern London proletarian realists - and a big lecher to boot. £500.'

It sold but not with alacrity. Born in 1911, Kersh began to write at the age of 8. After leaving school he worked as, amongst other things, a cinema manager, bodyguard, debt collector, fish & chip cook, travelling salesman, French teacher and all-in-wrestler all the while writing and attempting to get published. He finally managed to get his first novel 'Jews Without Jehovah' published in 1934 but in this autobiographical tale of growing up in an impecunious Jewish family in the East End of London he had not sufficiently concealed the identities of some of the characters and a member of his family sued for libel: as a result the book was quickly withdrawn and is now damned hard to find. He had more luck with his novel of the London underworld 'Night and the City' which was published in 1938 and has been filmed twice, most notably with Richard Widmark in 1950 although there is also a 1992 version with Robert de Niro in the lead role. It contains many memorable characters like Lipsky, Liquid Finger, Phil Nosseross, Anna Siberia, Adam the sculptor, and Figler, whose notebook carries “a lifetime of tortuous research in the snake haunted hinterland of questionable commerce… a kind of Kabbalah of buying and selling”. The Jewish Chronicle notes 'Kersh’s creations almost resemble Sholem Aleichem’s, but are far darker in hue.'

VALUE? No copies on the web at present, they are said to go through Ebay now and then and are possibly traded amongst enthusiasts without dealers being involved. Xeroxes of the novel are passed around between fans as there are a handfull of library copies in the British Interloan system (possibly cracked at the spine.) In November 2000 a signed copy (pictured above) sold in the $600 range. Despite the suppression it is not Kersh's rarest book, at the Yahoo Kersh group a collector notes - '...in terms of frequency of appearance for sale on ABEBOOKS. I've seen 3 copies up forsale on ABE in the past 2 years. Of course, all 3 were sold before I got there. Battle of the Singing Men has only come up once, and only the paper version. Private Life of a Private and the HB edition of Battle of the Singing Men/Selected Stories have never come up for sale at all. The Michael Joseph true first editions of Night and the City and I Got References have also never come up for sale. The Wishart edition of Men Are So Ardent has only come up once.'

Harlan Ellison is a collector and it is noted on his site he needs 'Jehovah' and also 'I Got References.' He calls Kersh the 'Demon Prince of Literature.' Anthony Burgess was a big fan calling 'Fowler's End' the greatest comic novel of the century. It is said that less than 50 copies of 'Jehovah' were sold before its withdrawal, but of course the withdrawn copies are not necessarily destroyed and sometimes find their way back on to the market. Even the 3rd edition Ulysses where 499 of 500 were said to have been seized and destroyed by customs turns up fairly regularly (possibly from Customs agents taking the book home--the last we copy we had came from Dover.) [ W/Q ** ]

Trainspotting. Irvine Wesh. 1993.

Irvine Wesh. TRAINSPOTTING, Secker, London, 1993

Current Selling Prices
$3000+ /£1500+


MODERN FIRST EDITION/ DRUGS / SCOTLAND
Top novel of the early nineties. Short listed for the 1993 Booker prize (the year Roddy Doyle"s "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" won). Druggy. Written in a Scottish / English dialect known as Port O' Leith. Reputedly only 600 hardbacks were bound up and (here it comes) most went to libraries. It is, however, as rare as rocking horse. Stunning debut novel, 'king good film, Ewan McGregor brilliant, shocking dead baby sequence, enough to put you off drugs for life etc.,

VALUE? Even the paperback, which is printed on the same sheets as the hardback, can get you a few hundred quid, the hardback is currently being offered by only one person-- a very high end Hell A dealer at $3000 and you can't argue with that price, Jimmy. Very hard to find and even the $3K one seems to have sold. Here is an example of IW's deathless prose- Tommy is discussing his drug problem:

If he asked us the question last week, ah'd huv probably said something completely different. If he asks us the morn, it wid be something else again. At this point in time though, ah'll hing wi the concept that junk'll dae the business whin everything else seems boring and irrelevant.
Ma problem is, whenever ah sense the possibility, or realise the actuality ay attaining something that ah thought ah wanted, be it girlfriend, flat, job, education, money and so on, it jist seems so dull n sterile, that ah cannae value it any mair. Junk's different though. Ye cannae turn yir back oan it sae easy. It willnae let ye. Trying tae manage a junk problem is the ultimate challenge...

One of a few passages in the book without a fuck or fucking or 'fecking.' Slightly reminiscent of 'Little Britain.' Occasionally the hero Mark Renton can talk cogently in bourgeois English about such subjects as existentialism (when up before a magistrate for stealing a book from Waterstones.)



UPDATE / NOVEMBER 2007
First posted 9 months ago. Since then the $3000 copy has sold and I found an old Simon Finch (illustrious dealer of dernier cri books) catalogue from 2002 where he lists a copy (that sold, possibly discounted) at £2500 ($5000). He describes it as red leatherette cloth lettered gilt at the spine with the top edge speckled and a white printed and illustrated jacket. His copy was fine/ fine and signed by the pallid Welsh '...to a sad Trainspotting bastard.' He says, however, that there were only 100 copies 'intended for, and rejected by, the British Library System...' Such is the books rarity that this is more likely than the 600 posited above.

The paperback (said to be 1000 printed) is becoming hard to find in decent shape and is worth £200+, some ask £500 for it signed but Welsh produces a steady stream of books (none in the same money league) and does a lot of signings so presumably a first paperback can be shoved in front of him for a signature, if you don't mind being called a sad bastard. [ W/Q *** ]

TRIVIA. A deserted railway station in Leith provided the shoot location for the dust jacket and paperback cover – two figures in death masks at the front (Welsh and a pal) two trains clearly visible in the background. This is, according to Welsh, a visual reference to the novel’s title, which compares the obsessive nature of heroin addicts to that of trainspotters. They also share a vocabulary – drug injectors talk about “mainlining” into their veins and have “tracks” left from repeated needle entry into the same place. The editor of the book was Robin Robertson, a serious book collector as I recall; the photos were by David Harrold. Secker went bust, Minerva who took the book over also went to the wall. Sic transit...

At Swim Two Birds...Flann O'Brien 'Intoxicatingly funny.'

Flann O'Brien. AT SWIM TWO BIRDS.Longmans, London 1939.

Current Selling Prices $2000+ / £1200+


MODERN FIRST EDITION / FICTION / IRISH LITERATURE
Comic and surreal masterpiece admired by Joyce, although he is not on the jacket blurb (was he ever?). JJ , nearly blind at the time read it with a magnifying glass and pronounced: 'That's a real writer, with the true comic spirit.' Also rated by Greene who was instrumental in getting it published, Beckett, Dylan (who is on the blurb - 'This is just the book to give your sister - if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl!') and in our time Nicholson Baker ('intoxicatingly funny.') Flann didn't have a lot of success in his time and his next novel (also something of a cult) 'The Third Policeman' was turned down and appeared posthumously. O' Brien (aka Myles Na Gopaleen) played a mean game of billiards and liked the black stuff and plenty of it. He wrote: 'When money's tight and hard to get/ And your horse is also ran,/ When all you have is a heap of debt /A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.'

VALUE? Sometimes seen, along with a lot of other homegrown lit, wildly overpriced down Dublin way- even indifferent second state unjacketed copies require a 1000 euro note. Auction records reveal 'uncorrected page proofs' selling for £1100 at Sotheby's in 1997. Venerable world class dealers Quaritch have one in d/j at £2K and that's about the limit for the second state slick grey one, the black is the first state (above) and can command as much as £3K or $5000 in a smart jacket. The trouble with all this is that it is a book whose greatest devotees seldom have a lot of spare change, and that's a fact. Stop Press Sept 07. The £2000 copy seems to have sold, an Irish book and art dealer has the US first (Pantheon 1939) at £1.6K a slightly barking, 'dream on' price because copies of the US first can be had in similar condition for less than £300. As Shakespeare might have said: 'Thy wish was father to that price.' [ W/Q *** ]



TRIVIA. O'' Brien's novel 'The Third Policeman' was featured in the October 5, 2005 episode of the hit television series 'Lost'. At one point during the episode (entitled "Orientation"), a copy of the book can be seen. The episode concerns the main characters' discovery of a mechanism which they are told must be reset at every 108 minutes by entering the numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42), or else "the world will be destroyed." The series' creators have said that anyone who has read the book "will have a lot more ammunition when dissecting plotlines" of the show. The book has seen a significant sales increase since its role in 'Lost'.

In our Charing Cross shop almost every day someone asks for it (we often have a copy) - other visitors also ask the way to the Soho pub 'The Rusty Cauldron', which doesn't exist outside of Harry Potter - however there is a rather camp pub called the Duke of York, known to some of its waggish punters as 'The Rusty Cauldron' and we occasionally send them there. Our picture below shows Anthony Cronin, John Ryan and Flann O'Brien (right with knee raised--possibly showing it to Cronin who created 'Dr. Finlay') on Bloomsday, Michael Scott's house, Sandycove, Co. Dublin 1940s.



Q. Who is Flann O'Brien?
A. Brian Nolan.
Q. Who is Brian Nolan?
A. Myles na Gopaleen.
Q. What did these three men do?
A. They wrote three books called "At Swim-Two-Birds."
--Brendan Behan, Irish Times, 30 July 1960

Vita Sackville-West The Heir. 1922

"Vita for three days at Long Barn, from which Leonard and I returned yesterday. These Sapphists love women; friendship is never untinged with amorosity...I like her and being with her and the splendour--she shines in the grocer's shop in Sevenoaks with a candle lit radiance, stalking on legs like beech trees, pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung. That is the secret of her glamour, I suppose. Anyhow she found me incredibly dowdy. No woman cared less for personal appearance. No one put on things in the way I did. Yet so beautiful, etc. What is the effect of all this on me? Very mixed. There is her maturity and full breastedness; her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coasting down backwaters; her capacity I mean to take the floor in any company, to represent her country, to visit Chatsworth to control silver, servants, chow dogs; her motherhood (but she is a little cold and off-hand with her boys); her being in short (what I have never been) a real woman. Then there is some voluptuousness about her; the grapes are ripe; and not reflective. No. In brain and insight she is not as highly organised as I am....mingled with all this glamour, grape clusters and pearl necklaces, there is something loose fitting. How much, for example, shall I really miss her when she is motoring across the desert?" Virginia Woolf. A Writer's Diary. 21 December 1925

"She is an absolute angel to me, and the value of her friendship is not to be measured in gold. Oh my dear, what intelligence! it is amazing - what perception, sensitiveness in the best sense, imagination, poetry, culture, everything so utterly un-shoddy and real. How she weaves magic into life! Whenever I see her, she raises life to a higher level."[Vita on VW.]



Vita Sackville-West. THE HEIR. A LOVE STORY. Heinemann / Privately Published ('Printed for private circulation.') London 1922.

Current Selling Prices
$650-$1400 /£320-£700

MODERN FIRST EDITION / BLOOMSBURY SET
Books by the Bloomsbury Set are still fervently searched for, often by persons who would not be admitted to any of their parties or soireés. I have seen massive collections of Bloomsburiana in neat suburban semis, high tech Docklands flats, once even on a pig farm in upstate New York. Then there are the married male and female couples (both gay ) trying to live the Harold and Vita lifestyle in unkempt parts of North London. It is generally admitted that Vita could write, but she did not excel at it like her one time lover Virginia Woolf (see above.)

We sold a copy of 'The Heir' on Ebay last year (they love Bloomsbury on Ebay) for about $800+. It was described thus:

"8vo. pp vi,120. Frontis. 9.5 x 6 inches. This is one of an edition of only 100 copies, printed on hand-made paper, each individually numbered and each signed on the photographic portrait frontispiece of VS-W by her. The limitation statement declares that numbers 1 to 50 were for sale, numbers 51 to 100 ‘for private circulation’. This is number 95. It was the first publication of a story which would later be reprinted a number of times alongside other of the author’s shorter works. It is a short novel which begins:"Miss Chase lay on her immense red silk four-poster that reached as high as the ceiling. Her face was covered over by a sheet, but as she had a high, aristocratic nose, it raised the sheet into a ridge, ending in a point… " It is a deathbed scene and sets in motion the story of a man’s inheritance of a house with which, as the story proceeds, he falls ever more profoundly in love. Vita would have drawn heavily for the story on her own relationship with Knole House in Kent where she was born but which, being a woman, she could not – to her everlasting distress – inherit.
Untrimmed pages are bound between patterned paper-cover boards with a spine of ivory-coloured buckram which bears a two-inch beige spine label. Facing the title page, and protected by an intact tissue guard, is a portrait of Vita based on the photograph by Swaine and which the author has signed in the lower right-hand corner." (Condition was OK but a little used.)

Below is a print of Knole House. Do not shed too many tears about her not inheriting this pile, she bought Sissinghurst Castle and made it into one of the most beautiful country houses in the home counties. Now seen as the embodiment of modern British gardening tradition, Sissinghurst is Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s enduring legacy, a haven of peace and beauty. Now open to the public and WAD (Worth a detour.)



VALUE? A very slight book, the trade edition has four more stories. For a book limited to 100 it turns up quite a lot. The first 50 copies bear the Heinemann imprint and the portrait of Vita is from the painting by William Strang, the second 50 privately printed with a photo. Both states are signed and there is no discernible difference in price between the although for some reason I prefer the ones with the Swain photo. The bibliography (Cross & Hulme) notes at least 2 states of the binding of the privately printed state, each with different flowaers and one with cream boards, the other mustard. In 2004 an average copy made £200 inscribed by Vita's mother to Alice Warrender. No copies currently for sale at less than £400. It does not seem to be going up in value but in general Bloomsbury prices are holding firm and Virginia Woolf shot up in value about 5 years ago and is showing no signs of collapse.

With Vita the one to find is her first book 'Chatterton' privately published in 1909 by the Sevenoaks High Street newsagent J. Salmon. The 16 year old Vita paid £5 for the 100 copies. Now valuable, Rota had a copy at £1350 in their 2002 catalogue of the Simon Nowell Smith Collection (possibly something of a rick), P. Harrington currently have a copy at £12,500. Her second book 'Constantinople' looks equally rare but a dealer in the 1980s unearthed a box of them and the book is still not worth much more than £300 in fab condition. At one time it was £20. Salmon, the printer of her first book, are still there in Sevenoaks and have a website - they call themselves 'the oldest established post card and calendar publisher in Britain.'

TRIVIA. Some gardening hints from Vita--after much digging and gently bossing gardeners about, she came to form some firm principles.  The first was ruthlessness.  If some thing was displeasing then change it.  Second was not to be too tidy in a garden, let self-seeded plants grow where they naturally fall, wild flowers mixing with cultivated plants in a garden was not a disaster.  Thirdly, have an architectural plan, a colour plan and a seasonal plan.

The Man with the Golden Arm. 1949.

Nelson Algren. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM. Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, NY 1949.

Current Selling Prices
$250-$450 /£120-£220

MODERN FIRST EDITION /PROLETARIAN LITERATURE / DRUGS
Algren's most famous work and the first winner of the National Book Award. 'Set in the gritty underbelly of post-WWII Chicago, Algren's prize-winning novel tells of a group of likable losers, chief among them Frankie Machine--card dealer, drummer, and drug addict. We also get acquainted with Frankie's whiny, wheelchair-bound wife, Sophie; his sweet girlfriend, Molly; the thief, Sparrow; and other denizens of Division Street as they struggle through life, often as their own worst enemies. Algren's sympathy for his creations comes through. 'Man' may be a "dark" tale, but it is laced with funny, tender scenes. Addiction, adultery, alcoholism, murder, and gambling all play a part, but they are filtered through fifty years of social and literary history. For those craving skillful writing sensitively read, this is a balm'.- J.B.G. Winner (contemporary review.)

First edition points include beige boards, green endpapers and a $3 price on the front flap - modern US novels are often clipped here to disguise the fact they are BOMC (Book Club) + there should be no mention of National Book Award. Made into the Otto Preminger film starring Frank Sinatra who gave one of his better performances. It is also remembered for the iconic work of the graphic designer Saul Bass whose staccato opening sequence is said to have transformed the way film credits were presented. Bass's credits for another Algren movie 'A Walk on the Wild Side' took the process even further and were widely acclaimed. [ W/Q ** ]

VALUE? Decent clean copies can be had for less than $300, very sharp copies a little more. Quite a few signed copies for sale, almost an abnormal amount--some authors are very free with their signature, some costive--Graham Greene used to say he would like to sign but he would be lowering the value for all the books he had already signed - a lousy excuse but perfectly logical. When Algren told Newsweek in 1956 "...Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own...' It is possible he was referring to Simone de Beauvoir whose lover he had been in the late 1940s and 1950s.

I was fortunate in the late 1991 to pick up a bunch of signed presentations from Algren to de Beauvoir on the stalls outside Shakespeare and Co in Paris. In 'Chicago City on the Make' (1951) he had written 'For Castor avec amour from Nelson in the Forrest Ave nest Oct 1951'. In a copy of 'Somebody in Boots' (1935) Simone de Beavoir had drawn two rabbits and and written under one 'Madame la Tigresse' and Algren had written under the other 'Monsieur le Tigre.' The pick of the bunch was de Beauvoir and Sartre's copy of Algren's hardboiled novel 'Never Come Morning.' Sartre and Algren were lovers of Simone concurrently and although Algren presented a tough guy image he found Sartre warm and charming (but he descibed him as looking like a shoe salesman.) Sartre and De Beauvoir had partly translated the book and many of the notes were in their hands - a triumphal airpunching find translated into a goodly four figure profit. Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?



TRIVIA. They named a street after Algren in Chicago, then after protests from locals it was changed back to its old name. Some see this as symbolic of his equivocal reputation. The critic William Brevda wrote of him:-

"... in Nelson Algrens version of the dark night of the soul it is always raining day after day and the rainbow sign is always neon Although he wrote about a circumscribed world of bars brothels prison cells and rented rooms Algren transformed the jukeboxes and neon signs of the wild side into an iconography bearing religious implication and existential universality... A jukebox running down in a deserted bar is the way the world ends..."

On the Road. Jack Kerouac, 1957.

'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,