Cards as Weapons by Ricky Jay

"Put a Deck of Cards in Your Pocket, Put a Feeling of Confidence in Your Life."

Ricky Jay. CARDS AS WEAPONS. Darien House, NY 1977.

ISBN 0446387568 (paperback) 0882010174 (hardback)

Current Prices
$200-$900 /£110-£500

GAMES /CARD TRICKS
Amusing and useful illustrated book showing how to throw playing cards better - subtitled "A Treatise on the art of throwing, scaling, juggling, boomeranging and manipulating ordinary playing cards with particular emphasis on impressing one's friends and providing a deadly yet inexpensive means of self-defence". The book, a perennial Ebay special and Library sale 'sleeper', is now being seen as a self help book that 'changes lives' - several comments at Amazon, not entirely tongue in cheek, attest to this. Apparently people take up card throwing in the way they used to take up tap dancing or juggling -to get out of a rut. Jay is something of a media star (MTV etc.,) and the book is much wanted. It is not especially elusive although it's hard to find a sharp copy as it is a thin large format paperback. It reveals secrets that some magicians feel should not have been revealed; as a manual it has been used by blokes like Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau, and Stephen Chow in their Asian gambling films.

VALUE? Copies show up a bit creased at around $200 and twice that for fine copies. Signed should show up as Jay is pretty approachable and was often seen at book fairs etc., being a serious book collector. God bless him. Magicians are often pretty serious book collectors - at one time one heard quite a bit about the highly acquisitive David Copperfield and his awesome collection. It is worth noting that there is also a hardback of the book that is much prized and dealers (who are not mad) sometimes ask $1000 or more for it, although a cautious punter could probably pick one up in the $600 to $800 range - in a jacket.

When the book came out some shops insisted that it was obscene because Ricky's assistant was naked as a Jay bird (okay, okay) and it got sold under the counter or even returned by bible bashers. 30 years later this persists - e.g. this ad on the web right now:

'A humorous and entertaining book. Even has a few pictures of a totally nude gal throwing cards. Due to this, you must be 18, or older, to purchase this book. Should you wish to practice your scaling, this offering comes with a 10 aluminum playing cards - made from a sheet of metal. Softback. $275.00

OUTLOOK. Ricky Jay, for some reason, will not allow the book to be reprinted. Only lousy copies drop beneath $100 (there is one on AMZ at present 'good only, with an "S" shaped bend to it' for $95.) Signed copies are becoming difficult -- only one is available right now, and in paperback, at $480 (signed 'The meagre efforts of a callow youth., Ricky Jay'.) The hardback seems to be showing up more and generally copies are coming home to roost a little. Unless someone finds an abandoned pallet full of them it should hold its value but is unlikely to ascend in price.

Old Bookshop / New technology

A marvellous shot of a very old bookshop can be found at the Shorpy Old Photo Blog. It shows the "Old Corner Bookstore, the first brick building in Boston." Close inspection reveals a book scout outside talking on his cell phone. In todays fast moving bookselling scene he would be more likely to be consulting the web on an Iphone or sending shots of books to a client via a similar device. To his left are the words 'Toy Books' probably referring to moveable 'pop-up' books like the works of Lothar Meggendorfer --now very valuable and well worth a call to an eager collector. Of course this photo may in fact date from 1900 as the estimable Shorpy claims--in which case see our last entry (Bastards with Bookshops 2 Sept) at the end where we refer to 'those new time machine phones.'



STOP PRESS I have subsequently found that this putative book scout may in fact have been picking his nose; however closer examination reveals a bulky cellphone in his right hand.

Bastards with Bookshops 2

THE WORST BOOKSHOP IN THE UNIVERSE
In the last posting I referred to a store in New Hampshire (now known to be 'The Antiquarian Bookstore') with a proprietor of a somewhat erratic disposition. I have since heard that the bloke is not a bad guy with a soft side to him when he is not belabouring your skull with an iron pipe. Moreover out of the goodness of his heart he takes the $5 browsing fee off your first purchase and that he actually has decent books. The motto of New Hampshire is 'Live Free or Die' and this man is simply following his bliss, dammit. Let him be. 

As for the shop known as "The Worst Bookshop in the Universe' this was identified in January 2001 when it was still extant on a book group called rec.collecting.books. Among other things that were said were:

"...books that have been there a long time are repriced upwards at the checkout, the owner (who apparently owns the whole block--no small money in today's San Jose) has paranoid notices everywhere and will even tell people who have their shirt tails worn loose (as is the fashion) to tuck them in less they conceal a book thither. The atmosphere is oppressive, the stock would disgrace a thrift shop.. Upon entry, I was greeted not by the pleasant scent 
of old paper, glue and cloth that I was expecting but instead 
encountered an aroma consisting of the apparent mixture of smoke, mold, 
and swamp-gas...

The man behind the counter looked at me with a blank hostile 
glance and continued to argue with someone on the phone. I quickly surveyed the cramped aisles and began poking around. I pulled 
the first interesting book I encountered and was disconcerted by the 
fact that the owner had used a red pencil to angrily gouge a price on 
the endpaper - way overpriced. When I looked at some book-club editions 
that had 1st-edition prices gouged in them I felt my anticipation slowly 
leaking away. I got the impression that the owner had no idea as to the 
worth of any particular book, and so priced them all outrageously so as 
to avoid accidentally selling one at a price below it's value (common book bastard ploy) terrible and inconsistent business hours... 
poor lighting, 
filthy floors/shelves ...
misanthropic proprietor... 
way-over-priced books...noxious stinky atmosphere... 
Horrible treatment of books ...
"Don't read the magazines unless you're going to buy" sign ...
Stagnant stock...Stygian...

Two things to note, the guy although he looked like the roady of a fifth rate Metal group was probably worth many millions- the dotcom boom had sent San Jose property prices ballistic. The worst guy to do a deal with is someone who doesn't need the money. As with other really bad shops personned by b'stards (there used to be one in the Tenderloin area of SF) they reprice stock that has been there a long time, often checking the net and ignoring low prices. Surely if a book has been there a long time the price is right or, in most cases, far too much? My own contribution to the debate was this:

"As I recall there was also a virulent phone argument going on as I came in. Old San Jose book scouts tell many a tale about this place, possibly over a pint in the nearby Gordon Birsch brewpub. I have come across many unpleasant overpriced dull shops but this takes the biscuit... in the movie version of 'The Worst Bookshop in the Universe' the part might be played by Michael Keaton reprising his Beetlejuice persona."

The shop went a few years back- probably mostly in dumpsters- but it has a half life on the net with the odd review still up as if it were still there. There is even a site where you can click on a phone and it rings the shop--I didn't try it and it would only get through if it was one of those new time machine phones. Was it not Eliot who said '...If all time is eternally present/All time is unredeemable.'?

to be pursued...

Bastards with Bookshops

BASTARDS WITH BOOKSHOPS or Look Back in Anger.

Shopkeepers are an ill-tempered bunch and booksellers are no exception. Booksellers are often on a very short fuse and can become incandescent with rage, inconsolable and beyond the reach of practitioners of anger management, Buddhist monks and preachers of peace, love and understanding. Bernard Black in 'Black Books' is said to be based on an amalgamation of real life characters- mostly high handed, cranky booksellers.

A bookseller on Route 1 in Porstmouth NH recently got in the papers yet again - he makes Bernard look like John Inman ('Are you Being Served?')--he charges a $5 browsing fee and has been known to knock out customers who venture in his shop without permission. I had heard of him over the years as an example of a dealer who had seriously lost the plot and have always been amazed that he stays in business. He has just been busted for writing bad cheques and the local paper chronicles his misdemeanours thus:-

"Past police calls to the Antiquarian book store have involved weapons, assaults and arrests, including the following:

* On April 2, 2005, police were called to the bookstore by a man who reported he was assaulted. According to police records, the customer reported Wakefield "tried to hit him with the door to the store."

* In April 1999, Wakefield was arrested on a charge of simple assault.

* On April 27, 1995, Dale Shaw of Rye went to the store and after being told there was a $5 fee to browse, an argument ensued, according to court records. A court affidavit said Wakefield called the customer a (expletive) retard," before hitting him with a metal pipe, scraping and bruising his arm. In 1995, Wakefield told the Herald he was defending himself from a robbery attempt and Shaw shoved him. Shaw was not charged by police with any crime.

* Hampstead auto parts dealer Patrick Murphy told the Herald in 1995 that he went to browse in the bookstore where Wakefield started an argument and called him "an AIDS infected" (expletive).

* In March 1994, Richard Wentz of Rye was arrested for criminal threatening, according to police records, for showing a handgun at the bookstore after getting into a dispute with Wakefield.

* In 1998, Wakefield was convicted of criminal threatening and assault against a Merrimack man for shoving and threatening him with a pipe.

* In 1988, Wakefield was found not guilty of pulling a gun on a customer.

Wakefield told the Herald in 2007 that he’s been the victim of numerous shoplifting incidents and 13 robberies and almost never calls police. Shoplifting incidents usually spark the trouble, Wakefield said, because he will confront attempted thieves."

It would be a foolhardy punter who having effected an entrance to the shop, paid the $5 browsing charge (only time I have ever heard of this in world bookselling) would then start stealing books under the eyes of an over vigilant man whose photo reveals him to be built like a brick shithouse. These chaps are always frightened that their invariably mediocre stock is going to be plundered. At a shop in San Jose, CA which I shall refer to as R+W, and is happily no longer, the proprietor was so paranoid he would not allow men with untucked in shirts in the shop lest they conceal a book, had a notice saying "Don't read the magazines unless you're going to buy", followed people into the loo in case theye were going to stuff books in their clothes and priced many Book Club books as if they were true firsts at hundreds of dollars in a red angrily applied crayon. This shop with its enormous, overpriced, stinkingly bad condition books was by common consent 'the worst bookshop in the universe' and was discussed on Google Groups in the early 2000s. to be continued...

Harrison Marks. Kamera 1957 +

Harrison Marks. KAMERA. (Magazine) Issues 1 to 89. 1957 -1968. Soho, London.

Current Selling Prices
$15-$40 /£8-£20 per issue

MAGAZINE / EROTIC PHOTOGRAPHY / KITSCH
We recently put a short run of this magazine on Ebay with the illustrations below and this description:

"Harrison Marks, Kamera (London: Kamera Publications, 1957)
ISSUES 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 & 10
This is a nine-issue run of the earliest numbers of Kamera magazine, the serial portfolio of nudes created by Gerrard Street photographer Harrison Marks. Each magazine measures 7.25 x 4.75 inches and is 32 pages long. The format throughout is uninterrupted black and white photographs of female nudes accompanied by a short commentary printed at the front and back. These commentaries cast light on the techniques used in the photographs; for example, ‘with breasts of unusual beauty, by cutting in with my camera, I have tried to achieve with dramatic use of light, shade and texture an effect comparable to a piece of sculpture'. (Like his American contemporary Russ Meyer, Marks was a breast man: ‘big tits sell’). Each magazine offers the reader 10 x 8 inch enlargements of any photo for 8/6 or a set of six for 42 shillings: ‘Truly a magnificent collection to hang in one’s study or office’. Models featuring in these pages include Pamela Green (Marks’s pretend wife) and the dark-haired ‘Julie’.

This suite of nine issues (the first ten minus issue number 8) is in exceptional condition without blemish or scuff and the colour covers are as lurid as new.

A flawless archive of erotic kitsch from Soho's glory days."

The curious thing is that the item got absolutely nowhere on Ebay, although a shorter run is catalogued at ABE at £750 and we wanted about £250. Four people only viewed in a week and I have a feeling they were all me. The explanation came from looking at other chancers listing risqué magazines--you are not allowed to show nipples. Curious because, as you may know, proper porn is freely available all over the infobahn. I guess Ebay have some sort of nipple detecting software or more likely pick up on key words in your description (nudes, breasts, tits). The items are not banned but if you put them up they get no visitors and are not indexed and have a sort of purgatorial half-life. Fees however apply. This rude word detection software is fallible--a few months ago a scholarly description of an 18th Century edition of Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' lead it to being sectioned in the same way.





VALUE. There were 89 issues of these kitschy mags and you seldom see the late ones. The punters for them these days tend to be funky collectors of oddballiana, kitsch, bad taste and erotica - they are now known as 'jazz mags.' Customers buy them for a laugh, young women, taste freaks and fashionistas collect them and they sell readily at £5 +. Occasionally older punters want them out of nostalgia, one collector pushing eighty had known some of the girls in the pics and collects specific women in the great Marks oeuvre. The whole run is now available on 18 CDs from a special Harrison Marks website. A complete run in paper should get into four figures.

A biography of the Van Dyke bearded photographic maestro is promised and interest in the man has never abated since a cult for him started in the late 1970s. TRIVIA. HM's chief model Pamela Green was cast, appropriately, as the nude model, Milly in Michael Powell's 'Peeping Tom' movie (1960.) The Parisian set had originally been designed and built by Pamela for her red-headed ‘Rita Landre’ character. Harrison Marks's Gerrard Street studio, in the heart of what we now know as Soho's 'China Town' (and within spitting distance of our shop) became the centre of the nude and glamour scene in the late 1950s. Possibly one day a blue plaque will appear on the building.

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.

where do you get these books? 5

11. Skips, dumpsters, recycling and rubbish tips. Not highly recommended but finds are known and there are golden legends attached to skips full of books. About 20 years ago in Stamford Hill, London, a skip (UK word for 'dumpster' and a nicer word imho) filled with rare Judaica was found by a lucky and clued up passer by. Some builders doing up a house had unceremoniously dumped all the books and documents in a big yellow skip outside the place - some of the books were of great antiquity. Legend has it that he filled a van with the material and took it to a West End auction house where it made half a million pounds. It's always half a million in these stories. By the way pics above, of a myriad of U.S. dumpsters, are by Trent Nelson -a charming photo essay on the The Dumpsters of San Angelo. For which much thanks. Below is a British skip--they are invariably this shape and often painted yellow and expensive to hire.



Another great dumpster legend centres around bookish Bell Street in Marylebone, London. About 25 years ago a defunct bookshop had been taken over by the council and the books were being chucked into a series of skips outside. People assumed they were wothless leftovers until some dealers started looking at the stuff and realised there were fabulous and pricey books in there - probably from some hidden backroom. When they started carting them away in boxes the council workers got very stroppy and a fight almost broke out. During the ensuing standoff one bookseller had the bright idea of giving the workers a hundred quid (about $300 at the time.) This was accepted with delight after which they could take anything they liked. Although at least one skip had been driven away the dealers had a field day and celebrations went on long into the night. To be continued with the story of the cycling dumpster diver of Santa Cruz, Frank Kermode's great loss and the curious skip of Sackville Street...

White Hunter in Africa - Bror Von Blixen + Le Comte de Janzé

Bror Von Blixen- Finecke. AFRICAN HUNTER. Cassell, London 1937.

Current Selling Prices
$200-$700 /£120-£350

Le Comte de Janzé. VERTICAL LAND. Duckworth, London, 1928.

Current Selling Prices
$200+ /£100+

SPORT / BIG GAME HUNTING / EAST AFRICA
Bror von Blixen-Finecke (1886-1946) was a good writer and a charismatic Swedish nobleman. Hubby of Karen "I had a farm in Africa" Blixen, pal of Denis Finch - Hatton, Beryl Markham etc., + guide to Euro royals inc the Pragger Wagger and others. A great shot, liked a drink, v charming, a white hunter greatly admired and chased by women. His biography "The Man Whom Women Loved" written by his godson, Ulf Aschan came out in 1987. According to aviatrix and former lover Beryl Markham, "Bror was the toughest, most durable white hunter ever to snicker at the fanfare of safari or to shoot a charging buffalo between the eyes while debating whether his sundown drink would be gin or whiskey ...The mould has been broken." In the Out of Africa movie Klaus Maria Brandauer, brilliant German actor, played him. Bror Blixen's bunch segue into Kenya's Happy Valley set and much later beautiful person Peter Beard.

The most elusive book coming out of the earlier period is 'Vertical Land' by Comte de Janze (Duckworth 1928) -- quite a sleeper, had it twice, never in jacket. No copies on web at present, worth a ton, but not much more unless in a jacket. The Comte was married to American heiress Alice de Trafford (played memorably by Sarah Miles in 'White Mischief') he later became a racing driver and is said to have moved in literary circles in Paris and formed friendships with Marcel Proust, Maurice Barrès and Anna de Noailles. Trivia--their daughter Nolwen married art historian Kenneth Clark (Lord Clark of Civilization) and was, presumably, the mother of diarist and politician Alan Clark, another great lover of women.

VALUE? Bror's 'African Hunter' is a big game book, but not in the customary leopard skin covers and not really one for the trophy room. A hunting specialist was selling a fine in jacket copy for $1000 but jacketless copies can be had at a shade less than $200. The $1K one is no longer available and may have sold. The 1938 Knopf edition was relatively common and could be had for $100 sans jacket. Jacketed copies are, however, hard to find.

Outlook. This is a reprise of a posting in late 2006 and the book appears to have moved on by about 10% with the US ed moving on at considerably more. Unjacketed copies of the Knopf 1938 first and the Cassell 1937 first sit there at between $200 and $280, no sign of a jacketed copy. A 'first thus' of the 1986 Capstick reprint series St. Martin's 100th anniversary (of Bror's Birth) edition fetches $60+ in nice state. The great white hunter thing may be a getting a little passé but there is a growing page ( (White Hunter) on the matter at Wikipedia--among other things it reveals that a character named Wilson, portrayed as a "white hunter" in Hemingway's safari story, 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber' is said to have been based on Hem's own guides, Philip Percival and Bror Blixen. Le Comte de Janzé's 'Vertical Land' is still unlisted, although copies may well have been listed and sold, it is not impossibly scarce - only an ebook at £1.60 is available. I will mark that book at a hundred minimum next time I see it.

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.'

Where do you get these books? 4

10. Book Towns. Where books go to die, although bargains have been known and occasionally the shops there get amazing books thrust upon them. They are also delightful places to hang out - as the photos show you can look at the books in the open air; however you have to really want to read them as outdoors a book can rapidly become what cataloguers call a 'reading copy only.'

The problem with booktowns is that they are not sourced in the way that normal second hand bookshops are-- local bookshops get their books from deceased estates, people who are moving or downsizing and books brought into the shop. If the propietor is a bit entrepreneurial he or she will go to auctions, visit other shops and generally be involved in running books to earth. I am not totally sure where booktowns get their books but they tend to be a lot less interesting than a local shop and often priced with a much heavier hand. It is said that many bookshops that have closed down have sold their stock to book towns, the trouble is that they have usually had a sale first. Occasionally we tell people with unambitious books or those that are too far away to collect, to drive them over to a booktown - at least there are plenty of potential buyers.



No book scout would name these places as a source, but if they end up there they have to box clever before they find a book they can sell at a profit. At Wigtown, a beautifully situated place and fun to hang out in, I was in mild despair-- every book seemed to be the right price or 50% over that: lateral thinking was required -- look for unique and overlooked items- eventually I ran across a bunch of non Peter Pan J.M. Barrie books stroppily priced at a fiver each, however each carried a Simeon Solomon bookplate. I sold each one at £50 catalogued thus:

Anonymous bookplate designed by Simeon Solomon with his characteristic S upon S monogram. Engraved by S. Wain it shows two Pre-Raphaelite looking women, one seated by a tree reading an old book, the other affixing a banner to the tree which bears the legend ‘content ailleurs’ 2 banners are already affixed with the words ‘labor’ and ‘theoria.’. Attractive and highly uncommon item in vg condition measuring 3” by 4 1/2”.

Book towns have their own site I.O.B. - International Organisation of Book Towns and recognise these towns - Bredevoort (NL) Fjærland (NO) Hay-on-Wye (GB) KampungBuku (MY) Montereggio (IT) Pennsylvania (US) Redu (BE) Sedbergh (GB) St-Pierre-de-Clages (CH) Sysmä (FI) Tvedestrand (NO) Wigtown (GB) Wünsdorf-Waldstadt (DE). Wikipedia lists a whole lot more. It is good to see that the love of books, bookshops and the general unfocussed sentimentality about the book itself is not just a British peculiarity. I have been to three book towns, the best being Hay-on-Wye (or Way on High as Driffield used to call it) - all glories to its King, Richard Booth, probably the most famous book dealer in the universe.



Wigtown was not unamusing but there were large book rooms there for which you would be hard pressed to pay £50 the lot. Redu is not without interest, but Martin Stone reported that it was filled with glowering soixante huitards and bargains are almost unknown. It was in book towns that I first spotted people selling library books -a thing almost unknown thirty years back, but now some shops have little else. Although I still regard them with suspicion and distaste I have now learned that you can actually sell them (especially on the web) and it is said the the Japanese regard them with favour (something about a book being worthwhile if it was good enough to be in a library.) Fortunes have been made from ex library books but that's another story... To be continued with charity shops, thrift shops, skips, stately homes and minicab offices...

Et Tu Healy? James Joyce, 1891 (revisited)

"His quaint-perched aerie on the crags of Time
Where the rude din of this . . . century
Can trouble him no more."

James Joyce. ET TU HEALY? (PARNELL.) Privately Published /Alleyn and O'Reilly (Printers), Dublin 1891.

Possible Selling Price
£1,000,000+ / $2,000,000+

LITERATURE / JUVENILIA/ POETRY / LOST BOOK
This is an update of an earlier post with new info at the end. 'Et Tu Healy' is a broadsheet poem by James Joyce said to have been published by John Joyce, his proud father, in 1891 when Joyce was nine years old. No copies have ever surfaced. There is, however, highly credible evidence for its having been printed and distributed among friends and family. Whether any copies have survived is another matter. The evidence comes from 4 sources - Joyce's father, Joyce himself, his brother Stanislaus Joyce and the dealer Jacob Schwartz of the Ulysses bookshop in High Holborn, London.
Stanislaus Joyce wrote in his 'Recollections of James Joyce' (1950)

He tried poetry, too, in the style of the drawing-room ballads to which he was accustomed ('My cot, alas!, the dear old shady home'), but the most successful was a piece on the death of Parnell, which I see mentioned apparently with my brother's sanction, by the title of 'Et Tu, Healy', though I do not remember that it bore that title. It certainly was a diatribe against the supposed traitor, Tim Healy, who had ratted at the bidding of the Catholic bishops and become a virulent enemy of Parnell, and so the piece was an echo of those political rancours that formed the theme of my father's nightly half-drunken rantings to the accompaniment of vigorous table-thumping. I think it was in verse because of the rhythm of bits of it that I remember. One line is a pentameter. At the end of the piece the dead Chief is likened to an eagle, looking down on the grovelling mass of Irish politicians from

His quaint-perched aerie on the crags of Time
Where the rude din of this . . . century
Can trouble him no more.

The production was much admired by my father and his circle of friends, whose judgement, in questions of literature at least, was as immature as the budding author's. My father had it printed, and distributed the broad sheets to admirers. I have a distinct recollection of my father's bringing home a roll of thirty or forty of them. Parnell, however, died when we were still at Bray, so the piece must have been written some months or a year after Parnell's death, because I am positive that the broadsheet was printed when we were living at Blackrock. My brother was, therefore, between nine and ten years of age when his ambition to be a writer bore its first timid blossoms. The lines I have quoted have stuck in my memory because 'the dear aerie' were standing jokes between us as late as when we were living at Trieste. Moreover, in the first draft of A Portrait of the Artist, now called Stephen Hero, the poem was assigned to the period I have indicated, and, further, describing a hasty packing up and departure from Blackrock, my brother referred to the remaining broadsheets, of which the young Stephen Dedalus had been so proud, lying on the floor torn and muddied by the boots of the furniture removers.

Richard Ellmann, Joyce's bographer, has always insisted that Stanislaus Joyce was a man of great integrity and a truthful and reliable source of information.

Ellmann reports in his biography that John Joyce (who died in 1931 and didn't think much of his son's Ulysses) told dealer Jacob Schwartz in regard to the broadsheet: "Remember it? Why shouldn't I remember it? Didn't I pay for the printing of it and didn't I send a copy to the Pope?' I have heard that some enterprising dealer went to Rome and managed to check the Vatican's holdings without any success. It is not surprising, because even if it had arrived there a broadsheet is likely to be misplaced or, at best, miscatalogued. There is some suggestion that the piece may have been called 'Parnell' - and our dealer may not have looked under 'P.'

I do not have Slocum's bibliography with me (I am in San Francisco) but I recall something about a receipt for the printing having been seen by a reliable witness. I know that Slocum quotes four further lines from the poem:

My cot alas that dear old shady home
Where oft in youthful sport I played
Upon thy verdant grassy fields all day
Or lingered for a moment in thy bosom shade.

Joyce remarked to Harriet Weaver that he had parodied these lines in 'Finnegans Wake.'

So where is this valuable item? If it is around a copy would be with the Joyce family or relations or Blackrock friends and neighbours the Murrays, Monaghans, Thorntons, Sheehans, Gallahers etc., A surviving copy could show up loosely inserted in some sheet music, or old Dublin Newspapers or magazines or in a scrap album or possibly bound up with other poems and pamphlets.

It is not unthinkable a copy would survive, for example such ephemeral items as the auction catalogue of the disgraceful and hurried auction at Oscar Wilde's house in Tite Street show up every now and then. However Joyce's vision of removal men treading the paper into the ground is all too believable. Also, as Ellmann notes, there was a lot of shame and disgrace around the Joyce name in Ireland after the supposed obscenity of 'Ulysses' was reported there - so any remaining copies could have then been destoyed.

There are many instances of books that were published with no copies having survived, mostly minor works. The most famous, and certainly even more valuable than 'Healy' if it ever turned up, is the Shakespeare play 'Love's Labors Won.' The dealer Pottesman ('Potty' - a great runner of incunabula) discovered in 1953 the August 1603 booklist of the stationer Christopher Hunt, which lists as printed in quarto:"Marchant Of Vennis[sic], Taming Of A Shrew, Loves Labor Lost, Loves Labor Won." There is other evidence but in general it is more doubtful than the Joyce juvenilia.

VALUE? Joyce published 2 other broadsheets 'The Holy Office' (1904/5) and 'Gas from a Burner' (1912) which show up irregularly at serious money. 2 not bad copies showed up at the 2004 sale of the much loved Quentin Keynes making £27000 (Holy) and £14,000 (Gas). The Joyce market is strong but fickle, collectors (not always cultured) come and go. At one point Joyce highspot prices depended on the severity of North American winters, as the biggest punter was a glove manufacturer. From the Quentin results one could very vaguely extrapolate a price if 'Et Tu Healy' showed. Say 30 times the pair + £200K for luck = £1.43 million or $2.7 million. There is a limit because it is the work of a nine year old boy, very slight and damn it, another could turn up!

Compiled in an airport hotel room using an Ellmann from a local bookshop, a paperback of Stanislaus, memory of bookdealer's anecdotes, Google, speculation, leaps of faith and Peet's good coffee. If anyone can shed any further light please write or comment, might touch it up when I get home to my own reference library.

Addenda August 08. I now have the bibliography and also Herbert Gorman's book 'James Joyce. A Definitive Biography' in front of me. Slocum, the bibliographer, points to Gorman as the source for the name of the printer. It was Alleyn and O'Reilly, although Slocum say it was actually Alley and O'Reilly--'the firm...was traced through a series of mergers to the Temple Press; a director of this press stated that all records were destroyed during Easter Week in 1916.' Copies may have been lost during this 'rising' or rebellion that lasted from April 24 to April 30 mostly in Dublin, although someone somewhere is said to have seen the receipt. Slocum states that the pamphlet is mentioned in unpublished letters from Constantine P.Curran and P.S. O'Hegarty in the Slocum Library. I like Gorman's final words on the subject

'No copy of this juvenile outburst aginst injustice and treachery is known to exist but it is still possible that some fortunate explorer fumbling through yellowed pages in a neglected Dublin garret may chance upon this Joycian opus number one of the year 1891.'

The search goes on - how many unexplored, neglected Dublin garrets are left!?

The Death of Grass (1957) by Samuel Youd (writing as John Christopher)

Samuel Youd (writing as John Christopher) THE DEATH OF GRASS. Michael Joseph, London, 1956.

Current Selling Prices
$600+ /£300 +

SCIENCE FICTION/ ECO - CATASTROPHE
Apologies for a repost but this time we have a pic of the jacket of the true first thanks to Andy over at Library Thing. The Brit's worst nightmare- the death of his lawn, but also an apocalyptic novel of a world devastated by the destruction of all grasses. I have handled this book over the years (in America it was renamed 'No Blade of Grass') but recently, with a greater interest in the ecology and vivid scenarios of ecological breakdown, it has become very desirable. This kind of fiction was once called 'Doomwatch' but is, in fact, part of a tradition of apocalyptic fantasy that can be traced back to S. Fowler Wright's 'Deluge' (1928) and all the way back to Mary Shelley's 1826 three decker 'The Last Man.' A useful list of speculative fiction about ecological disasters can be found at the Magic Dragon site. Highlights include:-

George Griffith. Olga Romanoff (1894) Comet strike and alien invasion.
M. P. Shiel. The Purple Cloud (1901). Poisonous gas.
Arthur Conan Doyle. The Poison Belt (1913) The Earth passes
through a poisonous ether.
J. J. Connington. Nordenholt's Millions (1923) Agricultural disaster
S. Fowler Wright. Deluge (1928). Flood.
Philip Wylie. When Worlds Collide (1932). Dying sun on collision
course with Earth. (Film: When Worlds Collide, 1951).
John Wyndham. The Day of the Triffids (1951) Venomous Plants.
Isaac Asimov. Caves of Steel (1954) Overpopulation -- and a
great mystery story.
Robert Silverberg. Masters of Life and Death (1957). Overpopulation.
J. G. Ballard. "Billennium" (1961) population
J. G. Ballard. The Drowned World. (1962). Flood.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Cat's Cradle (1963) Ice-9
J. G. Ballard, The Drought (aka The Burning World) 1965.
Harry Harrison. Make Room! Make Room! (1966). (Film: Soylent Green, 1973).
William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Logan's Run (1967).
Overpopulation; destruction of those over 30.
Lee Tang. The Wind Obeys Lama Torus. (1967). From India. Overpopulation.
John Brunner. Stand on Zanzibar. (1968). Young adult novel on overpopulation.
James Blish. A Torrent of Faces (1968)
Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. The Inferno (1973). Cosmic radiation
David Brin. Earth. (1990). Black hole.

'The Death of Grass' alone of all these choice works appears on Bookfinder's 2007/ 2008 list of the 'Top 10 British out of print books of 2007.' Other titles include Madonna's 'Sex' (1992) 'Brass Dial Clocks' (1998) by Brian Loomes and the easily found 'Forests of England' (1976) by Peter J. Neville Havins.

VALUE? The book of the film 'No Blade of Grass' (1970) was unremarkable* and did not help the book. However it has now become hard to find and is much wanted. I could find no image of the book's jacket and have had to use paperback covers. The most expensive copy is a decent but not fine example in the unclipped Trevor Denning jacket at £200, with a slightly lesser copy at £150 and paperbacks at £20. The Simon and Schuster 1956 US first can be had for $100 in sharp condition. UPDATE. There are now 7 copies of the Joseph UK first all at £300+ and three of them with the same dealer (not always a good sign) and a certifiable chancer with an ex library paperback at £370. Highest price is a very nice jacketed copy at £440. A book on the move but obviously not that scarce. Outlook? Choppy.



Mildly surprising is a £70 Penguin paperback edition at the excellent and normally moderate Westleton Chapel Books (about 7 miles from where I am now sitting.) Living near Sizewell Power Station he may have special knowledge. His condition description belongs to the ultra precise, painstaking Robbe-Grillet school '...Slight browning to pages, contents otherwise clean and unmarked. A little faint foxing or soiling to covers and spine rather browned. Joints show a little rubbing and small (5mm) split to base of upper joint, but covers are firm. Faint creasing to corners and a few light indentations show up when they catch the light. Generally a clean and very good copy.'

* The author Samuel Youd wrote '... I've never actually seen [the film]. I heard such bad reports when it came out that I couldn't bring myself to go to a cinema and watch it. Years later, it came on as a late-night television film, so I settled down to watch it with a glass of whisky. I lasted twenty minutes, then I went to bed. It was awful.'

Where do you get these books? 3

THE SOURCES OF OLD BOOKS (continued).
8. Street Markets, Book Markets. Most cities throughout the world have book markets. Above is one at Essaouria in Morocco beneath that Istanbul, and at the bottom some very modest books on a clapped out car somewhere in the world. There are 100s of such photos on sites such as Flickr--book markets make good photos. With some happy exceptions they are not brilliant book sources but fun to visit and you might find something to read at the very worst.

In Paris they are along the Seine almost every day, in Barcelona check out the Passeig de Gràcia, London has the South Bank and book stalls at many of the street makets like Portobello, Camden Lock etc., In Penang ask for the Chowrata complex, when stuck in Old Havana you need the Plaza de Armas, in Kyoto tghere is a large book market at the Shimogamo Shrine every August. There are book markets in Liden, New York, Sofia, Dniepropetrovsk (Ukraine) Amsterdam (at Spui every Friday) Jinan, Morbihan, Cambridge, Milan, Ludlow, Venice (several small markets -not brilliant) and Moscow. Even the venerable book market in Baghdad at Al Mutanabi which was devastated by a car bomber in March last year is still going, it is an ancient market that even the bestial bomber cannot eradicate. There is a highly rated Sunday book market at Daryaganj in central Delhi, in Lima, Peru there is a large book market outside the Museo de la Nacion. Book markets are often near museums or cathedrals. Sometimes they occur in small towns and villages especially those much visited--South of France, Aix en Provence, the West Country in England. Under baking sun at Alameda near San Francisco books can be found in the first Sunday of every month market with occasional cooling winds from the Pacific which laps at its edges.



In Beijing go to Ditan Park, there is an evening book market in Madrid (by the Sopia Museum) -also check out Hanoi, Melbourne (Federation Square) Ottawa (Rideau area) Kothi (now in a subway) College Street Calcutta, Lviv, Rome, Nice (Saturdays) Dublin (Temple Bar Square) and Istanbul (Resim Adi). France and Belgium are especially good with markets at Rennes, Damme (Belgium) every second Sunday, and Lyons. I knew a guy who went to a market in a provincial town in France and bought for 10 Francs each (£1) over 60 volumes of Notable British Trials -all in super nick. This series (sometimes known as Notably Brutish Trials) has one or two £100 + books and features also War Crime Trials and financial swindles like the valuable Trial of the City of Glasgow Bank Directors. As Cadillac Jack has it 'anything can be anywhere' and I hope to surpass this by finding a complete pristine set of New Naturalists at 10 Euros each. Dream on.

Where do you get these books? 2

THE SOURCES OF OLD BOOKS (continued).
Auctions are a good source and a place of learning. You see what books sell for, what sort of books sell best and who is buying them. Amazingly, despite the incursions of the behemoth Ebay there are still as many sales as before. Online auctions are a dodgier source and authenticiy and ambitious descriptions are a problem. One can keep a weather eye on top flight sales at Ebay at Rare Book Finder - where I note that the loony with the upside down Harry Potter now has it as a 'Buy it Now' at $19000, about a thousand times its true value. Do not click that button.

3. Bookshops. Second hand bookshops, although an endangered species, still exist and can be found in side streets of many sizable towns. People still sell their books to the owners in house calls (see 4) or by bringing them into the shop (1.) Most shops have too much stock to look everything up, so bargains can be found--also they are anxious to shift the stuff in a lousy economy - so deals can be made. Bookshops are a great source. We have punters who come in three times a day, so it must be true.

4. House calls. These are mostly only available to dealers and have been covered extensively in previous posts. Occasionally collectors sell to other collectors in the mistaken idea that they are paying less to one another than from a dealer -sometimes large collections. This is a parallel market and one hears of collectors paying one another mind boggling sums. Occasionally collectors buy or are given large collections. They usually devolve down to the trade in the end. Conversely one of the mysteries of the trade is that a dealer will often buy a book for more than a collector. In our shop we say 'if a dealer won't buy it the public certainly won't.' In a house in Barnes we bought a large collection of books that had been left (along with the mansion) to a local librarian. So keen as collectors were they that there was evidence that they had bought three substantial collections of books from other collectors. The librarian retired and proceeded to lead his life according to Riley.

5. Garage sales. Yard sales. Less common in the UK but a great source for our American cohorts. A friend in California scans the local paper and presents himself at selected sales at crack of dawn Saturdays and Sundays 51 weeks a year. He has made incredible finds including many boxes of superb pulps (Black Mask etc.,) also the tail end of the library of Robert Heinlein. He goes to the flea market before the yard sales open sometimes with a torch. These sales are also the source of an incredible amount of utter crap - some days he returns empty handed or has to make money on non book items such as records, art, posters and vintage Levi's.

6. Book Fairs. Plenty of these, especially in the UK, and a great source of books for collectors. Resellers are less well catered for although a good deal of cross trading always goes on before fairs start. It was at a book fair in London that someone found Melville's 'The Whale" (UK first 3 vols 1851) for £5, about a thousandth of its true value. Bargains known.

7. Boot Fairs, flea markets, jumble sales, library sales. Plenty of these for the active punter. Often disappointing but as before - 'bargains known.' The general idea is that books for sale should be devastatingly cheap and those charging ambitious prices should be ignored, unless their prices are not ambitious enough. Library sales are more common in America and are the main source of stock for many dealers. Some sales have as many as 500,000 books and dealers come in from surrounding states and fight to the death for the best stuff, a sort of clash of the tight ones.

They are also populated with a new kind of dealer, mostly listing on Amazon, who check their prices with handheld devices such as Neatoscan, ScoutPal and SellerFusion. Fascinating stuff, so far tied to ISBN books but watch that space. These devices work very fast, some old geezer checking ABE on his Blackberry would be left way behind. One good tip with these sales is to watch out for the books that dealers decide to put back on the tables in their final cull- many a bargain there. to be continued

Where do you get these books?

There is a scene in that true life comedy 'Black Books' where the shop proprietor, the shambling Bernard Black, is running low on books and needs to order some more. He picks up the phone and utters the immortal lines- "Hello? Is this the place from where you order books for when you want to sell them in your bookshop?"

If only it was as simple as that!

People sometimes ask where we get the books from and I tell them briefly-- from auctions and houses etc., However today I am trying to list every source just to get it straight in my mind. When it comes to asking where individual books come from I seldom know and for some reason bridle at the question. There is an implication that the book may have a murky provenance also some dealers are loathe to part with private information. Here is the exhaustive list, let me know if I have neglected anything...

THE SOURCES OF OLD BOOKS.
1. People bring them in to the shop--in boxes, bags and suitcases, by hand and by car, sometimes they send them in by taxi and call for a price. We don't let them down. For some shops esp in America this is about the only way. Normally they reject alot and either return them or donate them to charity. Some shops have a guy who takes these unwanted books away for a small consideration. They end up at flea markets, boot fairs ebay or on the web at puny (or punitive) prices. Some shops offer money for the books they want, some exchange or offer a choice between the two with exchange being distinctly higher. We pay with a cheque or cash and occasionally give a credit note to those who specify that they want it. This is not the greatest source of books but has been useful.

My old friend John Thornton who recently made retirement money on a theological library (God bless him) had the fortune to have a lorry turn up one morning at his King's Road shop with the valuable remains of the library of Peggy Guggenheim from Venice. Presumably they had been loaded on to a boat from her Venice villa and on to a lorry on the mainland. He paid the driver off and dealers descended from all over London--loads of 'published in Paris' books Beckett, Joyce, signed art books (Ernst, Man Ray, Breton, Eluard) Americana, antiquarian European books, rare pamphlets etc., Better than almost any house call most dealers will see in a lifetime. Even in 2007 when he hung up his pricing pencil he never used the internet, Google to him was a method of spin bowling. Because of this it was a favourite place for the trade and my first stop whenever I found myself in the wastes of Fulham.

2. Auctions. Both terrestrial and internet. Less of a good source because dealers are buying books to sell on the net and hard won knowledge is quickly surpassed by the hardworking viewer who checks everything up on the net. There are less bargains, less fast asleep sales and books are sold in smaller lots than of yore. Tea chests are seldom seen anymore. to be continued...

Tall Tales from the Trade 4

Closely related to the tale below is the case of the young dealer who bought a first edition of Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' for £90,000 without having the money to pay for it. Let's call him Ralph Barton. Ralph was a young bookdealer wanting to deal in important books but was not really possessed of the funds needed. He got by and occasionally got lucky. He had a two bedroom flat in Wandsworth shared with his girlfriend Serena -a city analyst who, along with her fiends, thought Ralph was a bit of a loser for dealing in books. She felt he should join her in the financial quarter or go into the law for which he had trained. They had a heavy mortgage but with his occasional windfalls and her decent salary they were able to manage.

One July morning Ralph was at another important London auction and bought a few job lots of rare 18th century pamphlet considerably under what he was willing to pay. Encouraged by this he started to bid on a superb 1776 first of 'Wealth of Nations' which the chatter in the rooms had reckoned would break the £100,000 barrier. He was still bidding at £90,000 when suddenly the bidding stopped and the hammer came down. The book was his. For Ralph this was probably the worst moment of his young life. The flat would go, Serena would leave him and he would be a pariah in the trade. Worst of all people were now congratulating him as if he had the money to pay for the thing. As he dejectedly sloped out of the rooms he bumped into a flustered figure in a ridiculously expensive suit. The man inquired anxiously "what did the Adam Smith make?" When Ralph told him £90K the man said - "I would have gone well over that, damn and blast it..." Needless to say Ralph sold him the book then and there - pocketing a quick £20K profit.

Ralph is now a proper dealer, well able to afford five figure books and has even become slightly pompous. Serena no longer thinks of bookselling as a trade for failures and they have moved to a proper house in Battersea.

Tall Tales from the Trade 3

In the book and antique trade auction houses are referred to as 'the rooms.' At Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous 'the rooms' refers to the ad hoc meeting places where addicts gather to share their experiences of recovery. The difference between the two is that book dealers are suffering from an addiction from which they will never recover. Some dealers have both addictions and thus spend much time shuttling between 'the rooms' and 'the rooms'.

Anyway, one bright June morning in 'the rooms' dealers were gathered to do battle over some choice items from a deceased gentleman's estate--large and important books from a country house library. It was London book fair week and buyers had flown in from America and come through the tunnel from Europe. From the beginning one buyer emerged as a major purchaser. He was an eccentric millionaire type in a white suit and straw hat buying fairly randomly, but when he bid he didn't drop out and dealers, as is their wont, had started to bid him up. This can be a risky business but can earn the dealer kudos as an important player.

A 4 volume first of Jane Austen's mock gothic tale 'Northanger Abbey' thus made a stonking £40,000 - a world record for the book that occasioned some mild applause. The man in the white suit was just getting stuck into some Darwin firsts when there was a loud kerfuffle in the room and 4 nylon coated nurses escorted the protesting bidder out into the street. He had been on day realease from a mental home in a London suburb. The lots were then offered again - many making half what they had made when the Bedlamite was bidding. 'Northanger Abbey', apparently a very ordinary copy, was 'bought in' at £8000.

Dick Francis. Dead Cert, 1962.

Dick Francis. DEAD CERT. Michael Joseph, London, 1962.

Current Selling Prices $6000 - $8000 /£3000-£4000

MODERN FIRST EDITION /THRILLER
Dick Francis is the Queen Mother's jockey who became a horse racing journalist and then a bestselling thriller writer. Dead Cert is his first book and not one of his best, some might say it's the least good of a generally pretty distinguished bunch. It is his most valuable book because it his first novel and has become quite elusive. It is a book that can be found and does not look valuable to the layman. One dealer makes the claim 'one of the scarcest books of the last 60 years...' It would not be hard to name about 100 scarcer titles from this period without leaving the field of mod firsts--Theroux's 'Mount Holly', Middleton's 'Holiday', Larkin's 'XX Poems', Pratchett's 'Colour of Magic', Maclaren Ross 'My Name is Love', Le Carré 'Call for the Dead' Ballard 'I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan...' and so on. The old confusion of value and rarity--even "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe' is both more elusive and more valuable. I have never had a smart jacketed 'Witch' but have had at least 3 'Dead Certs.'

Francis has an enviable fanbase. It is not uncommon to see his books next to Beckett & Joyce --he is considered light reading for the highbrow, also his books will turn up with a lot of sporting books, or country books or amongst lowbrow airport novels. He is asked for all the time--all of his later books are fantastically common and signatures abound. Here is a plot summary of 'Dead Cert:-

'For millionaire jockey Alan York, winning is a bonus. For Joe Nantwich, victory means no cushy backhanders; and for Bill Davidson, front running on strongly fancied Admiral, triumph is an imposter. It means murder - his own. Turning private detective, York uses Joe's underworld connections to go on the trail of the killers - only to draw a series of blanks. But when ambushed by a gang of vicious thugs, he picks up some clues along with his cuts and bruises. Bill's murder begings to make more sense. Until York finds himself in hospital, without a memory.'

This isn't the cosy world of Poirot and Marple, there is often some pretty nasty violence, people get injured physically and mentally and there is as good an assortment of villainous psychopaths and sociopaths as you'd meet any afternoon at Haydock Park. The books are also well researched without shoving the work in your face as a lesser writer like Ian Mcewan might do (I'm thinking of the surgery in 'Saturday'.) The research was done by his wife and partner Mary Margaret Brenchley who sadly died in 2000.

VALUE? Admittedly it is hard to find a spiffing copy of the book. An indifferent but not price-clipped example described as an 'honest copy' sits on the web right now at £4500. The highest auction record is £2600 + 20% commission at Bloomsbury in 2004 for a copy described as '...in d/j with minor rubbing & fraying & soiling.' About 6 copies have breasted £2000, all with minor faults. Fine copies are not forthcoming and could be found with the publisher, printer or agent or possibly among the collection of a reviewer who never got round to reading it. This year a copy described thus '...offset marks from sellotape on half-title, original boards, dust-jacket, small light strips of tape on inside flaps, minor fraying to spine ends and corners, some very light marking, otherwise very good' made £2850. In 2004 a slightly better copy made £3050.

Francis is known to have presented the first copy of each book to the Queen Mother, often in the royal box at Ascot--even with the parlous state of Royal finances these are not going to turn up for a while. One imagines them on a forgotten shelf in a lady in waiting's under chamber at Clarence House next to the Cecil Beatons, the Beverly Nichols and the Norman Hartnells. At this month's auction of the QM's top servant William Tallon (aka 'Backstairs Billy') the only book he possessed of hers was a reprint 'Mapp and Lucia' with her ownership signature - it made £300. Dick's second presentee was a Dr. Dixey who lived and practised in a neighbouring village to him and verified the medical content in his thrillers. His collection, in less than brilliant nick, failed to sell at Bloomsbury against a reserve of £4000 - £6000.

OUTLOOK? The 'honest' copy is still there, inexplicably £250 more expensive (this entry was first posted 9 months back.) A better copy has come in at £4950. There used to be an old maxim amongst dealers that if something didn't sell that you should put the price up. I guess the idea was that the higher price conferred greater kudos on the book. In the age of the net and the ability to compare prices at a stroke this doesn't really work unless you have something unique or maddeningly desirable. Dick Francis may be leveling off, his tales of the turf possibly a little vieux jeu in the age of forensic and techno crime.

Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930.

When does one first begin to remember? When do the waving lights and shadows of dawning consciousness cast their print upon the mind of a child? My earliest memories are Ireland.

It was at 'The Little Lodge' I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as 'the Governess' was announced. Her arrival was fixed for a certain day. In order to prepare for this day Mrs. Everest produced a book called Reading without Tears. It certainly did not justify its title in my case. I was made aware that before the Governess arrived I must be able to read without tears. We toiled each day. My nurse pointed with a pen at the different letters. I thought it all very tiresome. Our preparations were by no means completed when the fateful hour struck and the Governess was due to arrive. I did what many oppressed peoples have done in similar circumstances: I took to the woods.

War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid. It is all the fault of Democracy and Science. From the moment that either of these meddlers and muddlers was allowed to take part in actual fighting, the doom of War was sealed. Instead of a small number of well-trained professionals championing their country's cause with ancient weapons and a beautiful intricacy of archaic manoeuvre, sustained at every moment by the applause of their nation, we now have entire populations, including even women and children, pitted against one another in brutish mutual extermination, and only a set of blear-eyed clerks left to add up the butcher's bill. From the moment Democracy was admitted to, or rather forced itself upon the battlefield, War ceased to be a gentleman's game. To Hell with it!

Winston S Churchill. MY EARLY LIFE: A ROVING COMMISSION. Thornton Butterworth, London 1930.

Current Selling Prices
$600-$12000 /£300-£6000



AUTOBIOGRAPHY / MILITARY / POLITICS
Winston Churchill's memoir of childhood and early adulthood. It was published in 1930: Churchill was 56 and the Conservatives had the year before been defeated in the General Election; so began Churchill's 'wilderness years' during which he concentrated on writing. It would be over a decade before war and war leadership. My Early Life tells of the author's unhappy childhood, schooldays at Harrow, early military experience and foreign travel- action on the North West Frontier, moving on to the Sudan and then the Boer War. It was the basis of the 1972 film Young Winston with the now slightly underused actor Simon Ward (see below.)

The book, which measures 9 x 6 inches, contains 28 maps and illustrations including a frontispiece of Jennie Jerome, Churchill's American mother. The first state of the first edition should have 11 titles on the half title page - several variants are known. There are either 11 or 12 titles listed on the half title page, the cloth can be smooth or coarse, and the titling on the cover can be in either 3 or 5 lines. The cloth is prone to fading on the spine and the book often turns up in elaborate bindings- at present a garish Cosway binding is offered on the web at £6K with a crushed red morocco binding embossed and tooled in gold and with an inset portrait miniature of Churchill. Someone once said of these bindings that they are 'books for people who don't like books.'

The book is distinctly difficult to find in a jacket, a Churchill specialist who is presumably aware of how seldom it is encountered, wants to see a staggering $20,000 for a copy in a somehat chipped 'truly rare' jacket. This is the only copy available and it is not inconceivable a truly loaded punter might 'pony up' for it. Signed copies abound, but WSC is , so far, so well underpinned that his prices stay firm.



VALUE? A decent but not fine copy can usually be found sans d/w for around £200, a bit more in half leather, quite a bit more in full leather and, as noted above, loadsamoney in jacket. Churchill wrote a multitude of books and pamphlets. There are dealers, paying mortgages and raising kids, who deal only in Churchilliana. The book you want is 'Mr. Brodrick's Army (London, 1903)--the first issue (44 pages) was withdrawn and is worth north of £20K, the second issue (104 pages) is also seriously valuable. Early WSC pamphlets are always worth looking out for in political collections. In 2003 a British dealer found his early wraps (actually dark red card) book 'For Free Trade' (1906) while 'scouting' America (he declines to give the State) after a book fair for $5. In order not to rouse suspicion in the shopkeeper he asked for, and got, a 20% discount and turned his $4 into £20K on his return. These things are still possible. Do not confuse this with his 'Why I Am a Free Trader', 'Free Trade for Ever and Churchill Now!' or 'For Liberalism and Free Trade'--all bloody useful but a tenth or less of the value.

Outlook? Churchill collecting began in earnest in the early 1970s and is part of a trend of collecting books by powerful and epoch making figures. They are often sought by affluent and important, even self important, people. Persons of 'high net worth' with little time for reading -the book becomes symbolic of their achievement or aspirations or their heartfelt political sympathies and at the same time has status and, vitally, is a sound investment. Jailbird Conrad Black was able to write off all his purchases of trophy books as 'research' -to be fair several million dollars later he delivered a doorstop of a book- his 1,280-page biography, 'Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom.'

Ronald Reagan is collected in the same way, there are mansions full of Napoleon collections (Napoleana?) and there is now a discernible rise in Margaret Thatcher values. Even the poodle Tony Blair is collected, his signature while in office being distinctly scarce--he was too important to sign autographs. This stuff will always be a significant part of book collecting, auctions and book fairs and shows no sign of abating. With Churchill the really big money is reserved for presentation copies to other bigwigs- in 1998 someone paid $145,000 for 5 volumes of The World Crisis inscribed by Churchill to Edward as Prince of Wales with 4 ALS loosely inserted. Also in 1998 a My Early Life -an 'advance presentation copy inscribed to Ramsay Macdonald - made $22000, and it would doubtless make more today. Whether he will be collected in 2020 or beyond is hard to say. What is certain is that there is a wealth of stock out there to keep auction houses, collectors and dealers supplied well beyond then.

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.