Booksellers and the Big Crunch

Having just done the California Book Fair I should be in a position to pontificate about the effect of the crunch on trade. Surprisingly it was fairly reasonable with dealers still buying from one another, something I had feared might be completely curtailed; even the public showed some enthusiasm and produced cash, cards and cheques. True, everybody wanted deeper discounts than ever, anything that was ambitiously priced was ignored unless it was God's own copy, breathtakingly desirable, ballsachingly trendy or in effulgent condition.

Some higher end dealers sold very little but there were also reports of a few very high takes. Ephemera seemed to be doing well, prints less so. Some optimists said during the last recession that the book trade was the last to be affected and the first to recover; this time there have been signs that the more modest and user friendly end of the trade is weathering the storm or even profiting by it. The jury is still out but meanwhile here are some interesting but contradictory lead indicators, straws in the wind (no green shoots though!)...

1. Advert in 'Private Eye' 23 January 2009. "The Eye' is a UK satirical, whistleblowing fortnightly with a large and affluent readership. I found this in the 'Eye Needs' classified ads section which is full of the broke, the needy and the redundant looking for donations. Please help an antiquarian bookshop survive credit crunch 119100 01057770. The figures are bank account details in case you are minded to pony up. Not a good sign at all...

2. Thrift shops (charity shops) are reporting higher turnovers-- as much as 10% over last year. Given the fact that in the UK many charity shops charge more for their books than secondhand shops this is a hard one to interpret, but at least the money is going to good causes and is not being wasted by booksellers on Volvos, Real Ale, fine wines, single malts, bibliography, corduroy jackets and Apples etc.,

3. Article in 'The Daily Telegraph' 10 January 2009 - Frugal readers give second-hand bookshops a lift. The thrust of the article was that booksellers had a bumper year in 2008 'as cost-conscious readers cut back on buying new titles.' One shop, Barter Books in Northumberland, reported a 10% rise and Richard Booth in Hay reports an 'excellent year.' (One caveat to bear in mind is that turnover in second hand bookshops very much depends on the quality of books bought; I know of a seller who took £40K in 2007 and £150K in 2008 because he hit a stunning collection in his area, if the economy had been more buoyant he could have taken more.) Booth even supplies a slightly risible list of the Top Ten Used Books:

1. Kilvert's Diary 1870-1879, by Francis Kilvert
2. On the Black Hill, by Bruce Chatwin
3. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
4. Self-Sufficiency, by John Seymour
5. The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
6. The Famous Five, by Enid Blyton
7. The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest
8. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
9. Food for Free, by Richard Mabey
10. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

Given the randomness of book buying by dealers such lists are going to be site specific, subjective and highly unreliable but they may have some significance. King Richard's list has a Welsh bias. Our top seller is '84 Charing Cross Road', when we can get copies (£1 offered for clean examples.) At the bottom I append US giant Powell's 'Top Ten Used Books' ** list which reflects more American concerns. A spokesperson at Booth's said "We are having a great year. Despite the downturn, sales are up significantly. There are a number of factors. We are selling a lot more on the internet, and I think people are wanting to save money. They are probably not buying new books so much so they are turning to second-hand books instead." Good, encouraging stuff but alot of this info comes from earlier in 2008 before the recession really started to bite... to be continued with other factoids and news of one seaside shop where they are taking money hand over fist...



** POWELL'S TOP TEN USED BOOKS
1. James Bond: The Legacy by John Cork and Bruce Scivally
2. The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Artie Bucco

3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
4. A People's History of United States by Howard Zinn 

5. Emily Post's Etiquette by Emily Post

6. Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette by Peggy Post

7. Leadership by Rudolph W. Giuliani 

8. Larousse Gastronomique: The World's Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia by Librarie Larousse

9. When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden by Bill Maher 

10. What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained by Robert L. Wolke and Marlene Parrish

On Collecting Books by Tramps 2

Second and final part of a guest blog by R.M. Healey. No puns about 'came to greeff' by the way, and God Bless the King of Hay for giving the man a square meal. Take it away Robin....

The Canadian Paul Potts is linked to Gawsworth in some people's eyes. Both slept alfresco, though Potts was a lot shabbier and smellier. Friends used to speak of the Potts stink , which accompanied him wherever he went. Of his three or so books Dante Called You Beatrice, which I have mentally subtitled ' the longest whinge in literary history ' ( OK, perhaps Hazlitt's Liber Amoris is another contender ) is the best known. The dozen copies of the very common Readers Union edition in ABE all fetch around £3, but some joker has priced his at £14. Instead of a Sonnet is more difficult to find and a signed copy for £39 in ABE is probably worth a punt.

Both Potts and Gawsworth came to mind quite recently when I thought I spied another homeless writer examining some of the bargain book tables in Cecil Court. I wish I’d hailed him, but I wasn’t sure, and to save possible embarrassment walked away. Francois Greeff was someone I’d interviewed three years before for Mensa Magazine,but for some reason the editor had spiked the piece. But Greeff is an interesting character. After leaving South Africa, where he’d witnessed a close relative being shot in fron of him, he’d escaped for his own physical and mental health to England and after years of living rough ( often is his car ) from Cornwall to Bournemouth, but mainly in London, he finally settled down and started a course at Kingston University, which is where I interviewed him.

If homeless Colin Wilson wrote some of his The Outsider in libraries Greeff preferred the various day centres for the homeless dotted around London. Here, he would grab his chance to tap out his first book , The Hidden Code of Cryptic Crosswords, on the house computer,saving the data onto a floppy. He would then seek out a sleeping place. He shared Wilson’s liking for Hampstead Heath.

Problems with the computers in the different day centres drove Greeff ‘scatty’. But at length the book was complete and not long afterwards Foulsham brought it out. Greeff then borrowed twelve pounds to set up a website to promote his magnum opus and the praise he receive from grateful readers prompted him to travel to Hay to sell his book at the Festival. It was while he was sleeping under a fir tree near the town's electricity sub station that he met someone who introduced him to ‘ King ‘ Richard Booth, who invited him to dinner.

You can buy a copy of Greeff's debut paperback for a mere $1 on ABE, but the same site has another at $27.78. (Copies on Amazon UK at 1 penny but also at a stratospheric £111 with Galaxy Books. Ed.) A one hit wonder ? . Well perhaps, but my money is on Greeff writing his memoirs, which should be as racy and as embitterd as Potts '. So what that his debut volume was a book on crosswords. H.G.Wells's first book was a biology textbook.

Our pics shows a suited Francois signing his book at The Hay festival for newly knighted Sir Terry Pratchett, also for 2 fans. Insert shows Lord Bragg, sadly uncollected as far as I know.

On Collecting Books by Tramps

Et tu Healey? I was talking to the writer R.M.Healey. He had read our recent piece about Colin Wilson and told me that Wilson was not the only writer to have slept by night on Hampstead Heath and written a book by day. This lead to Robin writing the piece below on homeless writers, tramps, hobos etc., I first met Robin when he interviewed me for Rare Book Review. This long piece was posted here in several parts as 'Tales of the Uncollected.' We had talked of the supertramp W.H. Davies and the legendary tramp/hobo Jim Phelan....


Some other homeless writers may be worth collecting. Knut Hamsun, as a notorious WW2 collaborator and supporter of Quisling, has gone out of fashion a little, and perhaps he was never homeless for very long, but in his teens he did trek across America as a tramp and a pedlar, which must have furnished much autobiographical detail for his debut novel Hunger (1890).Actually, to my shame, I had never heard of Hamsun when I came across the first English translation, published by Leonard Smithers in 1899. I found it in a a jumble sale over 20 years ago . It was the board illustration that first attracted me –a sort of Beggarstaff Brothers line drawing of an emaciated face with a hopeless, downtrodden expression. On the flyleaf was a tipped-in signature of its translator, ‘ George Egerton ‘, which I later discovered was the pen name of a young Irish writer called Chavelina Dunne, author of Keynotes , whose correspondence with a number of fin de siecle writers was collected by Terence de vere White in 1958.

Copies of the Egerton translation, which remains current today, are very thin on the ground. I seem to recall there were a couple in ABE a few years ago, but I couldn't locate any the other day. Nor does ABE feature any of the Norwegian first, which the 2000 edition of Book Collecting prices at a measly $350 (shurely shome mishtake). However, paperback copies of the English transalation are legion and cheap enough, though some Aussie blagger has the cheek to ask £60 68p for a paperback published in 2007.!! My Egerton first , with its tipped in signature, must command quite a bit more than even the true first , but I think I’ll keep it. Hamsun won the Nobel prize, after all, and has been called the father of modern literature by Isaac Bashevis Singer, who compared him to Kafka. I can't think of anyone else who was writing quite like him in the late 1880s.

I doubt whether John Gawsworth ever troubled the Nobel judges, but if the notoriously unreliable Derek Stanford is to be trusted, he seems to have been as rebarbative as the gifted Norwegian in many ways. Often drunk and with a reputation for physical violence and boorsishness he alienated many fellow poets by his behaviour. Nor does a glance at his verse, or at his many anthologies, inspire one to defend him. All that King of Redonda tosh bores me senseless , but I know many who love it.

Is ( or was ) Gawsworth collected ? His unsigned volumes of poetry rarely fetch much more than £10 on the Net and a lot less in shops. Signed copies are a different matter. A copy of Poems of Today, an otherwise dull little collection, rockets to £70 in ABE because Gawsworth has written a poem in it. Likewise another bookseller ask £80 for his ' Very Rare ' copy of Flesh of Cypris, with its ' loosely inserted note ' from the poet. But for real vicarious bohemianism you must go to the two volumes of Gawsworth's personal diaries in manuscript, the only items that truly deserve the label ' very rare '. You'll have to pay Richrad Ford of London £1,500 for these . Incidentally, does anyone remember a TV feature on Gawsworth following his death in 1970 ?. I seem to recall him wearing a filthy and tattered overcoat as he picked his way through bargain boxes in Charing Cross Road ( or perhaps it was Farringdon Road ) while a voice-over narrated his fall from grace—from respected editor of Poetry Review to vagrant. The film ended with Gawsworth reciting one of his own poems which ended with the exclamatory ‘ Damn you, poetry ! ' Those last words have stuck with me through the years---a cri de couer from the mouth of a mediocre literary flaneur. .

A tip of the battered bowler hat to you Robin! To be continued with Paul Potts and Francois Greefe.

Powys. The Second Hand Bookshop Rant 2

Plato, that poetical enemy of poets, would certainly recommend his philosopher-kings to abolish second-hand bookshops. A second-hand bookshop can blow sky-high the machinations of centuries of first-hand politicians. It sets the prophet against the priest, the prisoner against society, the has-nothing against the has-all, the individual against the universe!

Here ends Peter Eaton's Book-Mark piece... Powys continues in strident tone-

"... It is as heavily charged with the sweet mischiefs of sex as the privy-walls of a railway station, or the imagination of St. Anthony.

Here are the poisons to kill, the drugs to soothe, the fire-water to madden, the ichor to inflame, the nectar to imparadise! The infinite pathos of all the generations lies here, their beatings against the wall, their desperate escapes, their triumphant reconciliations. In the Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God--and the Devil stole the Word out of the cradle. The everlasting contrariety, whereby creation is stirred into movement, seethes and ferments in books, in all books; and from the cold glaciers of books plunge down the death-avalanches of ultimate negation that whirl us into the gulf... we escape from it into the architectural spaces of the public library of our town, where matriarchy prevails, and where the mad reasonings of the sons of men are kept in complete control by the aid of catalogues and dusters. But after all one has only to think of those old, great, heroic bookworms of the early times, with their voracious, insatiable maw for everything written, only to think of Rabelais for instance, who certainly would have been caught invading those forbidden shelves, to be led back to our second-hand bookshop."

Such writing can seem somewhat overwrought, jejune, bombastic, even unhinged. Some regarded him as a windbag. Certainly It has a touch of the pulpit about it. His idea that women belong in libraries rather than shops would not play well now. Many of his ideas, however, are still relevant- second hand bookshops have become oases of sedition, eccentricity, obscurity and unashamed intellectual fervour in an increasingly conformist and dumbed down world.

Powys is good on 'browsers' - the great bookseller Simon Gough, now retired, used to chuck people out of his shop if they said they were 'only browsing' -he was once heard shouting at a customer. "If you want to browse, go and do it outside - get out"!!!!! If Simon liked you, however, he would offer you a 'dish of tea'. Another East Anglian bookseller Bob Jackson (oddly enough a former member of the Powys society) offers tea to all customers and often leaves them browsing while he goes off on a house call asking them to pay for their books in an honesty box.

I mentioned in the last posting that Peter Eaton's Powys Book Mark may have led to an amazing book buy. On the back (see pic) he asks for 'old books before 1860. Old letters, postcards, journals, also office waste, account books, bills etc..... It was the phrase 'office waste' that probably led to some clearance merchants (in some versions rubbish collectors) turning up one day at his shop with a van full of papers from the study of the orientalist and poet Arthur Waley (1889-1966)-- a lifetime of manuscripts, letters and journals, said to have been worth a fortune. Waley would have had fabulous material - he had been Assistant Keeper of Oriental Prints and Manuscripts at the British Museum where he taught himself Chinese and Japanese and translated classics and poetry from these languages and was also on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group. Also what may have helped was Eaton's well known mantra 'don't throw anything away...'

John Cowper Powys. The Second Hand Bookshop. A Rant.

"What a history of human excesses a second-hand book-shop is! As you 'browse' there– personally I can't abide that word, for to my mind book-lovers are more like hawks and vultures than sheep, but of course if its use encourages poor devils to glance through books that they have no hope of buying, long may the word remain!–you seem to grow aware what a miracle it was when second-hand book-shops were first invented. Women prefer libraries, free or otherwise, but it too often happens that the books an ordinary man wants are on the 'forbidden shelves'. But there is no censorship in a second-hand book-shop. Every good bookseller is a multiple-personality, containing all the extremes of human feeling. He is an ascetic hermit, he is an erotic immoralist, he is a Papist, he is a Quaker, he is a communist, he is an anarchist, he is a savage iconoclast, he is a passionate worshipper of idols. Though books, as Milton says, may be the embalming of mighty spirits, they are also the resurrection of rebellious, reactionary, fantastical and wicked spirits! In books dwell all the demons and all the angels of the human mind.

It is for this reason that a bookshop--especially a second-hand bookshop--is an arsenal of explosives, an armoury of revolutions, an opium den of reactions. And just because books are the repository of all the redemptions and damnations, all the sanities and insanities, of the divine anarchy of the soul, they are still, as they have always been, an object of suspicion to every kind of ruling authority.

In a second-hand bookshop are the horns of the altarwhere all the outlawed thoughts of humanity can takerefuge! Here, like desperate bandits, hide all the reckless progeny of our wild, dark, self-lacerating hearts. A bookshop is a powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drug store of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.



Of all the "houses of ill fame" which a tyrant, a bureaucrat, a propagandist, a moralist, a champion of law and order, an advocate of keeping people ignorant for their own good, hurries past with averted eyes or threatens with his minions, a bookshop is the most flagrant.
[Adapted by the great old Holland Park bookseller Peter Eaton in the late 1960s for a Book-mark ('Old Books Bought' added) from essays of J.C. Powys in his 1938 work 'Enjoyment of Literature.']

OLD BOOKS BOUGHT

More to follow including the spicier climactic end of the rant omitted (for reasons of decency, length and commerce.) It is possible that this bookmark lead to the call of a lifetime. Watch this space.

Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Oscar Wilde.THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. Ward, Lock & Co.,London, New York and Melbourne. 1891.

Current Selling Prices
$2000+/£1300+

CLASSIC LITERATURE /DECADENCE/ FANTASY

Wilde's only novel, considered by some to be his greatest work. One of the very few examples of decadent English literature, also a fantasy (listed in Bleiler as MX7- i.e. 'Magical Objects / Allegory, Symbolism). Oscar Wilde, chiding a hostile and prurient newspaper critic wrote- "Leave my book, I beg you, to the immortality that it deserves" and insisted in his preface "...there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That's all." Dorian Gray first appeared in Lippincott's simultaneously in Philadelphia and London, on June 20, 1890. This publication was immediately followed by publication of an unauthorized, pirated version of the tale, printed June 22, 1890 in New York by M. J. Ivers & Co. Wilde then substantially revised the work and added six new chapters and this the Ward, Lock 1891 edition is the normal first edition that you see (there is also the one of 250 Large Paper copies signed by the great man.) There is a simple issue point on the trade first edition,the first issue has the word "and" misspelled "nd" on page 208 eight lines from the bottom.

The plot it is summed up in this piece of pre publicity for the new 'Dorian' movie due to hit screens on 11 September 2009 - 'A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty eternally, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.' It stars Colin Firth as Lord Henry Wotton, the aristocrat who corrupts Gray and one Ben Barnes as the beautiful Dorian doomed in the Faustian pact. Apparently it is being done as a horror flick. It has been filmed several times notably the 1945 movie with George Sanders as Wotton --a b/w fim that bursts into Technicolor whenever the portrait is shown in close-up (as I recall.)



VALUE? The book has made over £25000 in auction inscribed. In 2006 a copy inscribed to Lady Dorothy Nevill (Sotheby's, July 13) made £22,000 (then $40,480) without the premium. The book is in Stuart Mason's bibliography as item 328. This copy varied from Mason in that there was a full stop after Dorian in the title and there is no final blank. Possibly an early issue of the first issue or a one-off printer's error. Lady Dorothy Nevill (1826 - 1913) was something of a grande dame, friend of Whistler and Disraeli and as a horticulturalist she is known to have supplied Charles Darwin with rare plants for his researches. She wrote four books of her memoirs ('Under Five Reigns' etc.,) some of which are still asked for but none of which are valuable.

The 1891 signed issue of 250 copies seldom makes less than £5000 in auction and dealers tend to want in excess of £8000 for it, even rebound. The regular edition is hard to find for less than £1500 unless in lousy condition; it has shown up wearing a green oil cloth dust jacket which added much value. The Lippincott magazine edition although considerably shorter than the book can make over a £1000 if decent and nearly a $1000 if a bit shabby. We sold an embarasssingly bad one (all faults shown) on Ebay in 2006 for a gratifying $550. They may be cheapskates and bottom feeders over there, but they are at least tolerant of a book in shagged out condition. Wilde prices shot up noticeably in the late 1990s and have remained high and may have now levelled off. The new movie might bump start Oscar prices once more.

TRIVIA. In 1943 Ivan Albright was commissioned to create the title painting for Albert Lewin's film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray which came out in 1945. His realistic, but exaggerated, depictions of decay and corruption made him very well suited to undertake such a project. His brother was chosen to do the original uncorrupted painting of Gray, but the painting used on the film was from Henrique Medina. Ivan made the changes in the painting during the film. This original painting currently resides in the Art Institute of Chicago. (Thank you Wikipedia)

British smack pack novelist, the gifted and amusing Will Self, wrote a modern version recasting Dorian as a 1990s Zeitgeist figure -druggery, buggery, thuggery, cruelty, betrayal, disease and all the newer nastiness--the New Yorker said it was '...as if Nancy Mitford and Johnny Rotten had decided to collaborate.' Lord Henry, a deeply unpleasant cock, was said to be based on a London figure, probably less than happy in this role. The book was received glumly by most reviewers. The CD, read by Self himself, is very good for a longish car journey.

It is generally assumed that Oscar's Lord Henry was based on Lord Ronald Gower a sculptor and known homosexual of the time. He sued a paper that mentioned this and when the Prince of Wales sent him a letter accusing him of being "a member of an association for unnatural practices", Gower wrote an angry reply along the lines of 'How very dare you!' John Addington Symonds, who stayed with him once, stated that Gower "saturates ones spirit in Urningthum of the rankest most diabolical kind."

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892—27 September 1940) German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, philosopher, aesthetic and cultural critic, flaneur, luftmensch, dabbler in Qabbalistic mysteries, eater of hashish, modernist, Ur post modernist, Francophile, psycho-geographer, translator of Proust and Baudelaire, victim of the Nazis and general European brainbox, egghead, polymath, hero, lover and genius. He is enjoying a fruitful afterlife on the net and in bookshops. His 'Arcades Project' book is a very large unfinished collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19th century, concerned with the iron-and-glass covered "arcades" (known in French as Passages). It has much on Baudelaire, Balzac,Poe, Saint-Simon, Hugo, Fourier, Marx and Engels, Gautier - also commerce, fashion, photograpy, the flaneur, prostitution and Haussmannization. A great work of scholarship and speculation - for dipping into rather than reading for hours on end, in my experience. He left this manuscript with Georges Bataille at the Bibliotheque Nationale when he fled Paris in 1940. He died in slightly mysterious circumstances, possibly suicide, on the Spanish border later that year. It is thought that he felt (with some justification) that the perfidious Spanish douaniers were about to hand him over to the Gestapo.

One passage interested me as I was looking at my paperback copy this morning -a piece about the general dealer Fremin:

'' " We have no speciality" - this what the well known dealer in secondhand good, Frémin, "the man with the head of gray," had written on the signboard advertising his wares in the Place des Abbesses. Here, in antique bric-a-brac, reemerges the the old physiognomy of trade that, in the first decades of the previous century, began to be supplanted by the rule of the specialité. The "superior scrap- yard" was called Au Philosophe by its proprietor. What a demonstration and demolition of stoicism! On his placard were the words: "Maidens do not dally under the leaves!" And: "Purchase nothing by moonlight!"'

That is all we get about this oddball trader Fremin, apart from Google Books citing this passage the web knows him not. Possibly there is more info on him buried in the Bibliotheque Nationale, where Benjamin researched the work. The lives of dealers generally go unrecorded apart from listings in directories and occasional mentions in newspaper, diaries and memoirs. Benjamin's father was a dealer in antiques in Berlin (at one time rich) and may have talked of Fremin. Pic of Palace des Abbesses below--now a very trendy area of Paris. As a generalist (albeit within the speciality of books) I salute him across the years. I used to see a notorious general dealer, possibly Irish, around at Phillips 2 when it was at Bayswater (occasionally accompanying Bob Geldof, then an antique dealer and known in the trade as 'dirty Bob' on account of his unkempt look). It was said that he would deal in absolutely anything and once bought 5000 tins of catfood as well as 500 cat books in the flat of a deceased catlady.

Collecting Benjamin? 'The Arcades Project' as a fine US first in hardback from 1999 can be had for $50 or less. Benjamin' s 1928 doctoral thesis 'Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels' (Origin of German Tragedy) published by Rowohlt can go for $1000 and a lot more in d/w. One dealer has his second publication from 1923 'Charles Baudelaire/Tableaux Parisiens', a rare 12 page book, said to be beautifully produced, at a gamey $6000, although it is 'as new.' A very nice find. He will, I hope, continue to be collected, read and savoured until Armageddon and beyond.

Colin Wilson. The Outsider, 1956

Colin Wilson. THE OUTSIDER. Gollancz, London 1956.

Current Selling Prices $200+/ £125+

MODERN FIRST EDITION / PHILOSOPHY
The key work of the Angry Young Men, a now slightly forgotten fifties movement akin to the Beats and preceding Hippies and Punks. The book is portentously subtitled 'An Enquiry into the Nature of the Sickness of Mankind in the Mid-Twentieth Century.' Colin Wilson, 'the Angries' best known advocate, is said to have slept rough on Hampstead Heath and written the book (age 24) in public libraries in a time of Existentialism, black polo necks, frothy coffee etc., He had been forced to quit school and go to work at 16, although his aim was to become "Einstein's successor." After a stint in a wool factory, he found a job as a laboratory assistant, but he was still in despair and decided to kill himself. On the verge of swallowing hydrocyanic acid, he had an insight: there were two Colin Wilsons, one an idiotic, self-pitying teenager and the other a thinking man, his real self. The idiot, he realized, would kill them both. "In that moment," he wrote, "I glimpsed the marvellous, immense richness of reality, extending to distant horizons." The peak moment, as detailed by William James. This vision has never left him and can be seen throughout his work - many of his later works dwell on the occult. Eckhart Tolle had a very similar moment and went on to sales in the tens of millions.

We had a copy in 2000 described thus:

'8vo. Signed presentation copy to Stephen Spender:-’For Stephen, whose work was one of the main influences on forming the sensibility that produced this book, although it cannot be responsible for the mis-spellings and mis-quotations. With affection...’ A remarkable association copy of the author’s chef d’oeuvre. Top edge sl dusty, sp sl cocked else near fine in vg or better d/w, sl soiled and a little creased and frayed at top edges. £400.'

The book is now on the web at $6750 (£4800) in a nicer jacket--something of a 'dream on' price that may be achieved by, say, 2030. What I and subsequent cataloguers failed to play up was the association of one generational figurehead to another, the torch being handed on--rather as if Johnny Rotten had signed his seminal work 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs' to Donovan or possibly Wilde had inscribed 'Dorian Gray' to Walter Pater.

I console myself that my £400 re-invested in good books in 2000 and working on a 50% annual mark up (ie selling for £600 in 2001, reinvesting and selling for £900 in 2002 and so on) would now yield £10000. On this basis the buyer asking £4800 will, even if he sells the book in 2012 make a loss of £15000. Clive of Bohemia wrote a book on this kind of re-investment, the problem is finding (and being able to sell) the right books every time.

Another copy presented to no one in particular is much more overpriced at £2500, probably by a factor of 10, however it comes with 'provenance' something useful to have when re-selling on Ebay. Signed copies can be at £200 or less--even to recognisable names.

The UK first is basically a £100 book and twice that for limpid copies. The American first can make about $80 -which is the price a guy wants for one described thus: '...yellowed endpapers with tape ghosts. Otherwise, NOT price clipped, NOT BOMC, no underlinings or plates. About as close to fine as you can get for a 50-year-old book...' An interesting sales pitch making a virtue of things that the book is not, and clinching the deal with the deluded 'good for its age' ploy. Collectors in my experience make no allowance for age, especially a mere 50 years; age is hardly a factor until you go back to Victorian books (which can still show up 'as new.')

OUTLOOK? Wilson may possibly undergo a revival. He is now rather neglected--his works don't turn up in '1001 books you must read before death' and similar lists. He is not listed in price guides. He is still saleable but not really known to the current under 40s unless they are into the occult. He also wrote exceptional thrillers with Crowleyesque villains and even Science fiction and fantasy of a Lovecraftian / chthonic bent all of which has its collectors. One of his thrillers has a serial killer who leaves quotations from Blake on his victims--a Blake scholar solves the case. There is even a fanzine/ bulletin for his admirers. Meanwhile 'The Outsider' has stood still at the same price for a decade. Sell or hold but don't buy unless well cheap and in great condition.

Grossly Over Priced Web Operators / Rant du Jour

ENTER THE GOPWO
The overpricing of some books on internet malls is commonplace and almost to be expected. The initial reaction to those who complain is 'get over it...' However when overpricing is grossly high and when it is allied to a poor or catchall book description (or none at all) then you can enjoy some righteous indignation.

My father, who flew a bomber in WW2, used to utter a bit of old RAF slang when confronted with annoying bastards--he called them Gopwos - it stood for Grossly Over Promoted Warrant Officer -a sort of self important little man quite common in the services, possibly even a Widmerpool (but that's another story.) I have appropriated this term to describe very high chargers on the net -'Grossly Over Priced Web Operators.'

For example, recently I found a 20 page modern pamphlet called 'Fundamentals of Fiddle Teaching' by one Barbara Chipper (published Essex 1981). Someone has priced the book at £1247.90 ($1,838.28). It doesn't appear to be a mistake as they have many similar books at vertiginous prices. Until I put my copy up it is the only one on the net--this tends to leaves the seller full reign for their imagination and it is surprising that they stopped at a mere £1247. The clincher is the catchall description used by the seller for this and tens of thousands of their books:-

"No major defects: clean, complete, not falling apart; some light wear. A perfectly good reading or reference copy."

Not falling apart! --at this price one would expect Nigel Kennedy's own pristine copy with two 500 Euro notes laid in and a long letter to him from Yehudi Menuhin loosely inserted! It is hard to imagine a circumstance in which someone might pay this price--possibly if If Barbara Chipper was a preudonym used by Sylvia Plath when she wrote violin teaching manuals or possibly Jean Rhys (aka Barbara Chipper) taught the violin in old age or if Warren Buffet or George Soros or the Google twins had been taught by Ms Chipper and wanted a memento to cherish or maybe someone needed the book in a multi million dollar lawsuit to prove a point or a major rock star demanded a copy in his dressing room as part of his contract...actually there are many reasons but the odds of the book selling are, say, 10,000 to one. How to price my copy I am not sure, at £100 it still looks barmy and I may be accused of being a 'Gopwo.' Of interest in the book is a piece about the effects of taking Oxprenolol for stage fright--Ms Chipper advises against it.

The image above of the insouciant young woman standing on a bookpile, about to be arrested, comes from the Dutch blog
Occam's Razor. Many thanks. Occam's is possibly a neo-dadaist hangout --putting some Dutch words beneath the image through Babel it translated thus:-

ah, who sweet little girl that within a negligible number of year zo' n harry pot-delicate heart also without wand, however, break can and - for the fratsen of the boeboeks, there we it occur, and such as above the voordeur the gegrift stands ' everyone leest' , and as long as everyone reads that, is we glad, glad and joy-full. our actions do not go unnoticed. we do not work in ijle. not today, and also yesterday not!

Fairly typical Babel gobbledy gook or Stanley Unwin goes Dutch!

Is there anyone here who knows anything about books?

The above is from Helen E. Hopkinson's 'The Ladies God Bless 'Em!' (Dutton NY 1950) value probably less than twenty bucks. H.E.H. was a wonderful New Yorker cartoonist portraying privileged female life on The East Coast. The UK equivalent is probably Pont or Anton (although Anton has a crueller streak.) Many of Ms Hopkinson's cartoons involve a large lady, often in furs, asking infuriating question in shops (mostly about wine, hats, shoes or books.) At the box office of a theatre she earnestly inquires 'Just how funny is Milton Berle?' Like New Yorker cartoons today they raise a smile rather than a belly laugh. A glimpse into a vanished world.

Joseph Heller. Catch-22. 1961.

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

Current Selling Prices
$2000+/ £1500+

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

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



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

Tales of the Uncollected...4

{a couple of years ago]...he began looking at Wants List on the net. This led to a notebook filled with scribblings on which books people around the world wanted. The opposite of sleepers, these are not necessarily rare books, but are useful. Pulling out the notebook he reads out a random selection of the entries.
'Here, for example, is Vic Hurley, Jungle Patrol, 1938. It's the story of the Philippine Constabulary. Twenty-five people want it. £100. Van de Elskin, Foto Jazz, 1959. It's just pictures of blokes playing jazz in cellars with groovy European girls looking on by the Dutch guy who did Love on the Left Bank. It's Juliette Greco, black polo-necks, etcetera. Goes for about $700 and 20 people want it. Jet Planes of the Third Reich, 1982. Fat book. Twenty-five want that. Susan Brookman, Ladies Man, Bantam. Many of these trashy romance novels go for piles of cash. Gerald Kersh, Jews Without Jehova. That was suppressed, I think. Julian Cope, Krautrock Sampler. All about Kraftwerk. A hundred quidder in paperback.
Here's a genuinely rare item. La Poupee by Hans Bellmer. There is a legend about that particular book. Apparently, there was a copy of it in a window of a shop in New York City for a whole year. A mate of mine went in and asked how much it was, to which the owner sardonically replied, "Fifty bucks," as if to say "F**k off, you can't afford it." So my friend said, "I'll have it." He went away with it under his arm and sold it for 20 grand.'
So far the name GA Marlowe and his remarkable novel I am Your Brother hasn't been mentioned. Having come across this book in Mclaren Ross's Memoirs of the Fourties, I had tracked down a copy in Cambridge University LIbrary and was actively looking for one myself. Fat chance. For obvious reasons, this weird mystery story written in a bizarre cinematic style had attracted a cult following and was near impossible to find at less than £300. Marlowe's shady background and mysterious disappearance added to the appeal. Burwood had written about Marlowe on his Bookride website and he now had goodish news.
'They're starting to gather on the web now. There are about five copies for sale. Marlowe's a bit like that author of The Treasure of Sierra Madre- B Traven. A slightly mysterious figure who disappeared suddenly, never to be seen again. Another who vanished in odd circumstances was the Dadaist Arthur Craven. He had just married the poet Mina Loy when he possibly drowned in South America. He edited a magazine called Maintenant, which is worth a lot of money today.'
But books can disappear too. Some were spirited away, usually burnt or otherwise destroyed by scandalised keepers of the public morals, but sometimes by authors who were ashamed to have written them. I have covered some of these examples in a previous article, but the subject continues to fascinate. Burwood recalls some cases that have caught his imagination.
'Gordon Bottomley- Gordon Bumley, as we call him- was one. He is, or was, a vaguely collected 90s figure and he tried to suppress his first book. Another is George Moore, who tried to destroy all copies of one of his books. Then there was Arthur Bryant, the celebrated popular historian. His Unfinished Victory of c1940, revealed distinct Nazi sympathies, that is to say, that Mr Hitler was not such a bad bloke and we should try to come to some accommodation with him. Well, the climate of opinion changed and Bryant tried to gather up all the remaining copies of his book. Consequently, the book is now scarce and a jacketed copy might fetch as much as £200. Anyway, Bryant's efforts succeeded and he became the most patriotic historian of his day.'

We are sitting in what he calls his internet room, but I detect a tinge of regret in his voice when he talks about the days before the net changed everything. But is it necessarily true? Surely, there are still bargains to be had. He doesn't think so, but he does feel that today rare items are more appreciated by their owners.
'The era of finding treasures for a few pounds is all over, but on the other hand the internet has bought books to the surface. You might actually get the book you want, even though you will have to pay more for it. In the old days you'd find, to take one example, The Gent From Bear Creek for a pound and you'd sell it for two grand. But this would only happen once in a decade. But thanks to the net, some of these elusive items are showing up.
'Because of this, some books are no longer considered rare. A good analogy is this. A friend collects pilgrim's badges. These are little items- usually made of lead- which mediaeval pilgrims picked up for a few pence as a souvenir of their pilgrimage to Walsingham or some other shrine. For centuries they were rare- until the invention of the metal detector. Now, they are comparatively common.
'I compare the internet to the metal detector. Due to changes in technology many rare books are no longer hard to find. Some of course remain determinedly elusive. You won't find copies of Bromo Bombastes every day, but others are more easy to find and the Henry Music anecdote proves that rare items can be brought to the surface thanks mainly to the net.' THE END.

Damien Hirst. I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere...1997

Damien Hirst. I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now. Booth-Clibborn Editions, London, 1997.

Current Selling Prices
$900+ /£500+


ARTIST'S BOOK
The last copy we sold was signed and we described it thus:

Large 4to. As new in publishers cloth in like dustjacket (taken out of the publishers shrink wrapping merely to check signature was present). Original faux leather boards embossed and gilt decorated. 334pp. Illustrated throughout in colour including 7 pop-ups, gatefolds, die cuts and other special features including ephemera laid in and poster at rear. SIGNED by Hirst; highly collectable in its signed form as Hirst (the Duchamp of our time?) has become unapproachable especially with a big book under your arm.

You really need brand new copies as the parts often fall out or quickly get defective. We sold another copy still in its shrink wrap with a 'signed' label -- some collectors prefer their books untouched and still sealed 'like a virgin' ( e.g. Madonna's Sex always worth more unopened.) The full compliment is 7 gatefolds, 23 die-cuts, 7 pop-ups, ephemera and other special features, plus one folded poster laid in. 'Extravagant' 'innovative' and 'provocative' are words frequently used around this book. I have heard it said that some books have different ephemera...

The Hirst industry started to get slightly silly last year. Below are the contents of a goody bag (aka 'doggie bag') given out at his 2007 party/preview ('Beyond Belief') at the Dorchester to launch his $100,000,000 diamond encrusted skull sculpture. Diamonds are a skull's best friend (tabloid headline.) One delaer wanted £700 for his night's haul, another a risible £375 for the chocolate skull covered in silver sparkle ('one of the few that got away uneaten.') The seller assures us that 'they taste terribly good.' At the Lyon and Turnbull sale of 27/9/08, the first of the sales of recent British art to significantly bomb, a goody bag and book were offered described thus:

GOODIE BAG + BOOK
Complete 'Goodie Bag' given out by Damien Hirst and White Cube at Hirst's 'Beyond Belief' exhibition. It contains a 'For the Love of God' T-Shirt, a Smythson customised leather skull note book, a CD of The Hours, a white chocolate and glitter skull sweet and five pairs of HoloSpex glasses to view the artist's diamond encrusted work - 'For the Love of God'. Sold with a signed and inscribed copy of Damien Hirst's book, 'The Death of God'.

They failed to reach a reserve of £600. The earlier £100,000,000 sale of Hirst art at Sotheby's also in September is now being seen as the apex of a market in swift decline, a sort of dead cat bounce deftly directed by Jopling and Hirst. Real artistry there.

OUTLOOK. Hirst is unlikely to suddenly implode, too many people are invested in him and he is still the greatest talent of the Brit Art crowd. Hard to buy a signed one at less than £1000. A copy at £1600 has been on the web now for 3 years. Prices will probably remain good for unmolested examples of the book. Even though the Gordon Burn essay is of a high order it is best to read it elsewhere or with great care. 'Goody bags' are best avoided -many major stars would not have been to a reception this century where there wasn't a goody bag and might require sessions of therapy if the goody bag wasn't good enough, as it were. I haven't heard of significant collectors of the items-- they may well be traded on Ebay?

A Lion Called Christian...

Anthony "Ace" Bourke and John Rendall. A LION CALLED CHRISTIAN. Collins, London / Doubleday NY 1971.

Current Selling Prices
$200-$600 /£140-£400

Slim book (94 pages) that was resuscitated by the amazing YouTube video of the author's moving reunion with the pet lion in the wilds after a long separation. An example of a book that was suddenly desirable because of a YouTube video. It appears in Bookfinder's list of the 10 most searched for books of 2008.

Back in Swinging London two groovy Aussies straight out of Austin Powers were living in Chelsea and decided to buy a lion cub at Harrods. They gave him the witty name of Christian and took him out to restaurants in the back of their Bentley. He never bit anybody--this was the era of peace and love. After a year, Christian had grown from 35 to 185 pounds and it was suggested by actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna that they take it to Kenya. They had just finished filming “Born Free,” the famous story of Elsa, a real lioness who was reintroduced to the wild. This was based on the Adamson's 1960 best seller (decent jacketed firsts £10). Soon Rendall, Bourke and Christian were all on a plane to Kenya, where they and George Adamson introduced Christian to his natural habitat.

When they knew Christian had a new family and a safe territory, they went back to Europe, but kept in touch with Adamson and made a few return visits to Kenya to see Christian in the wild.

Their first reunion was in early 1972, a year after Bourke and Rendall left Christian with Adamson. It is this event that is shown in the grainy colour film that has become such a sensation on YouTube. It shows the cat approaching the two men, cautiously at first. Then, as recognition begins to dawn, the lion picks up his pace and leaps into the arms of his old mates. We see two young guys in flared jeans and shaggy hair, and a very large lion. When he recognises them he hugs them and tumbles with them. It is very moving with an underlying feeling of possible danger. 6 million have watched it. Two other versions of the video on YouTube have drawn another 6 million hits combined. Inevitably a few people want the book.



VALUE? There are three copies on ABE at £105 (a very unpleasant ex lib reprint) £210 (a 'good' ex-lib - probably bad, an unqualified good usually means bad) and £380 (reasonable copy in chipped d/w). All seem too much for what they are, especially as the book is about to be reprinted and can be ordered at Amazon for March 2009 (pic below) at £6 -fully revised and updated by the authors. Prices tend to collapse on a reprint, e.g. an applied art book currently touted at £2K+ is about to be reprinted at £50. Caveat Emptor. Generally the new revised edition is preferred.

OUTLOOK? Choppy, uncertain and probably murky. A nice signed copy of the original is probably a good investment, as always avoid ex library copies. Check out the short video here.

Edwin Abbott. Flatland, 1884 (revisited)

'I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows — only hard and with luminous edges — and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen...'



[Edwin Abbott.] FLATLAND: A ROMANCE OF MANY DIMENSIONS.(With illustrations by the author, A Square.) Seeley & Co, London 1884.

Current Selling Prices £600+/ $1000+



FANTASY / SATIRE / SCIENCE
Our image shows the cover of the Blackwell's later edition but it is substantially the same as the 1884 first from Seely and Co., 'Flatland' is a science and mathematics fantasy that satirises class consciousness in Britain through the depiction of a society where geometrical characteristics are the basis for class distinctions and protocol: circles are the elite, with squares, triangles and lines subordinate in that order. Three dimensional objects are encountered only in the dreams of the populace, and anyone who claims the reality of a third dimension is considered mad. I can be seen as an attack on the staid and heartless Victorian society, with its bigotry and stultifying prejudice. "Irregulars" (cripples) are put to death, women have no rights at all, and when the protagonist in the story Mr. A. Square tries to teach his fellows about the third dimension, he is imprisoned. There is a good discussion of the work and 'Dimensionality' in general at the University of Winnipeg Cosmology site.

A very popular and much wanted book although with 700 copies on the web it is not hard to find if you merely want to read it. Occasionally when you tell people you sell books they immediately ask for a copy of 'Flatland.' I saw a copy somewhere for $0.09, a hard price to beat. Interesting claims are made by purveyors of firsts of the book include:-

'... Prior to Einstein's general theory of relativity, it aimed at redefining the frame of reference of our perceptions of the world, and opening up the possibility of the kind of self-awareness that came to characterize the modernist, and post-modernist, perspective...."

The precursor game is fun - I saw someone on TV recently claim that Saki was the forerunner of Monty Python and even The Mighty Boosh. John Betjeman once claimed Theodore Wratislaw was the first punk. Suvin in Victorian Science Fiction in the UK calls the book "A pioneer of SF as cognitive parable, and the culmination of UK SF up to that time." The 1884 first is cream-colored parchment over stiff wrappers. The US first a year later is a hardback. Much desired is the Arion Press 1980 edition in 275 copies, each signed by Ray Bradbury who provides the introduction, it comes with aluminum covers & aluminum case. There is a 1983 reprint with foreword by Isaac Asimov and in 2002 'The Annotated Flatland' appeared. The book is used in classrooms as a teaching aid and has been translated into many languages, it is especially liked in Spanish. There have been references to it in the Simpsons and people talk about it over at My Space, so it is still au courant.

VALUE? (Written May 2007) The first can go for £600 and more and because it is a fragile production it very seldom shows up in fresh condition, the 1885 US edition about half that and the 1980 Arion Press metal edition £500. In auction a compromised copy at Pacific Book Auctions made $600 in 2003 ('covers wrinkled & darkened, some loss, front hinge cracked - large spot on page 8...') and an Arion Press edition made $900 in 1998. There is a fine one for sale at the moment for $1350. Currey has a chipped but else fairly decent 1884 first at $1500. I guess a superior copy could top $2000 and a signed copy , so far unseen in auction at least, might go through the roof.[ W/Q ** ]



Edwin Abbott (1838 - 1926) was a London headmaster, a clergyman and author who wrote several theological works and a biography (1885) of Francis Bacon but is best known for his standard Shakespearian Grammar (1870) and of course this pseudonymous work. Dionys Burger has written 'Sphereland' (1965) a sequel to Flatland, that depicts the adventures of A Square's grandson, A Hexagon, who investigates the shape of flatland as it sits in three-space.

STOP PRESS A copy of the Arion Press 1980 edition (signed by Bradbury and Hoyem) sits at ABE at a punchy $3000--however the seller notes '....the text pages and illustration units measure 7 x 14 inches and are joined accordion-style to a length of 33 feet printed on each side, making a 66-foot long book.' A copy signed only by Hoyem, the illustrator, can be had for $1500. We bought a decent 1884 first in early 2008, put it on Ebay hoping (as always) for a spectacular result but it failed to meet its reserve of $1200 and subsequently sold for $1100 to a private punter. It was described thus:

Large octavo. 9 inches by 7. [2 blank], viii, [1]-100, [2 blank] pp. Original publisher's off white printed and illustrated parchment over stiff card plain covers. Diagrams and figures in text by the author. Some small chips at spine and hinges and edges. Printed covers slight browned and slightly soiled - overall a sound about vg above average example of a vulnerable book. Contemporary neat inscription with some relevant quotes from Samuel Johnson on f.e.p dated 4 December 1884, initialled by one 'E.L.' As Lilly writes ". . . the most influential fantasy tale to explore mathematical theory. Satirically cast in autobiographical form, the narrator--- one A. Square---is an inhabitant of a two-dimensional universe who tries to conceive of what it would be like to live in three dimensions."

OUTLOOK? A book that will always be good for a $1000 in decent condition. The trouble is that the kind of people who lusted after this book (geeks, boffins, technocrats) are no longer making silly money; however their time will come again so the book is one to hold on to through recession, slump and financial Armageddon.

Also worth looking out for is the related 1907 fantasy novel by EA's fellow fourth dimensionalist C.H. Hinton - 'An Episode of Flatland; of How a Plane Folk Discovered the Third Dimension to Which is Added an Outline of the History of Unaea.' Currey has 3 copies in varying condition from $300 to $650. Stableford says of it -'....a very strange story (it) describes a two-dimensional world rather more complicated than Abbott's, and features a startling plot in which the inhabitants of a two- dimensional planet avoid collision with another by diverting their 'world' in[to] the third dimension, taking advantage of the fact that... their souls have access to more dimensions than their bodies."

Tales of the Uncollected...3

continued... Another book that he is convinced does exist appeared under the pseudonym of Gaffer Peeslake.'

'We know it as Bromo Bombasts by Laurence Durrell. There's a copy in the BM, another in the Library of Congress; the collector of Durrell had one and I vaguely heard that Martin Stone had found another. Someone offered me a copy in appalling condition- it looked as if it had been draggedup from the sea or something. I said, well, I'll give you a £100, because you could just about read the thing- to which the bloke announced, "I've been offered a grand." So I told him to take it!"
Then there's The Girls of Radcliff Hall, by 'Adela Quebec'- in real life a great book and a rare one by Lord Berners, who obviously took the title from the name of the notorious lesbian novelist. 'It will cost you £2,000 and if you want one Maggs have got a copy,' Burwood says. 'It never shows up in great condition. It's another roman a clef. Everyone in it is a real person disguised and the reason it is rare is that those portrayed in it bought up copies and destroyed them because they felt Berners had shown them up in bad light. Cecil Beaton was especially incensed, but there's no doubt that he deserved his treatment by Berners.'

A famous pseudonym sleeper is No Decency Left by Barbara Rich, a novel of 1932 written mainly by Laura Riding, but containing contributions by her partner Robert Graves and a chapter by TE Lawrence. 'When Laura Riding was up there with Sylvia Plath it used to be a two thousand quidder, but nowadays most people find Riding very hard going. However, it's still a good find. You can find expensive copies on the net today, whereas years ago the book could be picked up for a couple of quid.'

One of the most famous sleepers is Henry Music, a work put together by Nancy Cunard and published by the Hours Press. 'This not only contains Samuel Beckett's first appearance in a book,' Burwood points out,' but features a cover by Man Ray. It's a simply fabulous book and usually goes for $10,000. However, I know someone who needed a copy of the book... He went online to the usual specialist booksites. No luck. He then went on eBay and struck lucky. However, the vendor hadn't mentioned anything about Beckett or anyone else. All he said was that "I think it's from the 1930s." This person bought it for nine and a half euros! Nine and a half!'

... it was time for one of Burwood's favourite sleepers. A Gent from Bear Creek was the first book by Robert E. Howard, who went on to write Conan the Barbarian. It appeared in 1937 from Jenkins, who specialised in adventure stories, but who also published Wodehouse. Most copies were destroyed for some reason and Howard himself died young. But since his death, he has become a cult figure with whole books and comics being written in his style. 'I got £3,000 for a not very nice copy with no jacket,' he says,' but a good one would set you back over double that sum today.'

'Black literature is also collectable and there's a slim volume of poetry by Claude Mckay called Spring in New Hampshire which appeared in 1920 and which now fetches a thousand quid. I recall going into this bookshop in Virginia Waters run by a British nationalist Party member. There was a bloke sitting behind the counter reading some Nazi newspaper called Stormstrooper, or something. I found this particular book on a shelf and in it he had written "thirty pence". I left the shop with it and sold it on the blower for £200... to be continued with further tall tales, boasts and blagues...

Tales of the Uncollected...2

Interview by the redoubtable R M Healey continued... We return to the subject of bizarre book titles. 'I remember putting out at an American fair books by HA Manhood with titles like Gay Agony. I sold them to a dealer because he thought they were a laugh. Today, Manhood is vaguely collected, but in a minor way, like Wilfred Roland Childe. But genuine gay verse- Uranian was the term then used- is certainly collected. Books by the Reverend E E Bradford- the books on "boy love" that were sniggered at by John Betjeman and his friends in the 20s-are very sought after now. Titles like Songs and Ballads, Passing the Love of Women- now there's a clue- Lays of Love and Life, The Romance of Youth, The True Aristocracy, Boyhood. They're always in red cloth and when you find them it's an instant hundred pound note.'

SLEEPING GIANTS
It was time to talk about 'sleepers'. Burwood regularly puts out a list of books that are always wanted by collectors of various genres- debut books, horror, fantasy, cult, the occult, experimental fiction, detective fiction. He starts going through the list, summing up their genres like a litany, occasionally expanding on those that interest him.
'Charles Birkin, Devil's Spawn... Jocelyn Brooke, Six Poems, his first book and Uranian... rather boring, but worth a few grand. Baron Corvo- well, that's cult. Aleister Crowley- occult. A book by Georges Darien called Gottlieb Krumm, Made in England, which Martin Stone told me to look out for, but which I've never found. Robertson's Davies's first book published in England, called Shakespeare's Boy Actors. That's a great find.
'I used to buy copies of this particular book from a guy in Stratford who specialized in Shakespeare. He'd always have a copy and you'd always get it for £30, but you'd have to pay £100 for it elsewhere. George Gissing, Workers in the Dawn- his first book and a fabulous rarity. By the way, Paul Theroux's Murder at Mount Holly is worth looking for. It's not his first book, but it was remaindered. I remember actually seeing it marked at 20 pence. Talking of valuable remainders, someone I know recalls seeing The Negro Anthology- a 5,000 quidder- remaindered in the 50s! This was a big book that appeared in the 30s. why it suddenly reappeared in the 1950s I have no idea, but such things can happen. Years ago you could find Fortune Press titles remaindered. I remember seeing them.'
We've only reached the letter 'H' on his list. 'Oh yes, Heron-Allen* is very collected,' he continues. 'He was in the Sette of Odd Volumes and wrote on a number of different subjects- on Thanet, topography and fantasy.' (picture left)
Then a jump to W and HR Wakefield. 'They Return at Evening- horror. Yeat's first book, Mosada, is a sleeper. If you ever find a copy, it's worth 50,000 quid.'
Another market hot spot, he advises, is sleepers written by people using pseudonyms.
'Helen Ferguson, who also used the name Anna Kavan and Helen Woods, is deeply collected,' he says. 'Something to do with being a pioneering woman writer, a drug addict and a general bohemian. A sort of Nina Hamnett figure. Spirits in Bondage, which was published in 1919 under the name of Clive Hamilton, is actually the first book by CS Lewis. A great find! It's not worth as much as Narnia, but it's still useful. Incidentally, he wrote another book under the same pseudonym. But the most valuable of all is the legendary Questions at the Well by 'Fenil Haig", a book of poems by a very young Ford Madox Ford. I've never seen a copy. The British Museum copy is missing, which is always a sign of a great rarity. It's still listed in the catalogue, but if you try to order it, you come up with nothing. But the book does exist. You can look it up in the Library of Congress catalogue. Incidentally, another literary debut stolen from a national library, this time in Australia, is the House of Cain, by that great Antipodean writer Arthur William Upfield, who created a detective called Napoleon Bonaparte.'
Another book that Burwood is convinced does exist appeared under the pseudonym of Gaffer Peeslake.' to be continued...

* Edward Heron-Allen (1861 - 1943) British scientist, polymath and writer of fantasy fiction. Some of his weird fiction was written under the pseudonym Christopher Blayre including the rara avis/ black tulip 'The Cheetah Girl' 1923. Oddly enough I have a customer for this book if you chance upon one. He wrote poetry, including 'Ballades of a Blasé Man' and novels ('Bella Demonia.') He also wrote on palmistry, the violin, fossils, barnacles, Irish and Dorset topography and was Brother Necromancer Wednesday nights at the Sette of Odd Volumes...

Tales of the Uncollected...

Recently I was honoured to be interview by book maven R.M. Healey from Rare Book Review...here are some highlights and a few notes. Some of the stuff has already been covered in Bookride but what the hell...It took place in our shop shown below; forgive the shameless self promotion!



TALES OF THE UNCOLLECTED

When it comes to rumours of ghosts, unicorns and sleepers in the bookworld, only one man can provide the answers. R M Healey speaks to Nigel Burwood about the ones that got away- and the ones that never existed at all.

His Bookride website is already required reading... and his Any Amount of Books shop on Charing Cross Road has one of the few genuine bargain basements known to me. Nigel Burwood, therefore, seemed the ideal person to chat about the elusive, ultra-rare, and possibly non-existent titles that continue to evade dealers and fascinate collectors alike.
I was delighted to be invited down to his cubbyhole of an office, where the rumblings of trains on the Northern Line a few metres below can be heard quite distinctly. Appropriately enough, given these strange sounds and the darkness that lay beneath us, we began talking about ghosts. Apparently these are books that possibly don't exist, despite being announced in magazines or catalogues, or mentioned on the jackets of other books by the same author, and my host had obviously prepared mentally for the interview because he mentions my name.
'Et Tu Healy, supposedly by James Joyce, is one of the most notorious,' he declares. 'No one has ever seen a copy, which suggests it never existed in any form, or was destroyed or lost.'
A more modern example then springs to mind. 'I was at a Salman Rushdie signing in the States recently, and he revealed that when he was young his father had printed several copies of an early work of his- a piece of juvenilia- and he had boasted that he owned several examples of his son's earliest printed work. But he had never actually dug them out to show Salman, and when he died no one looking through his possessions could find them.'

HIDDEN TREASURES

I believe that like Rushdie, a number of authors have these Et Tu Healy skeletons in their closet- tantalising objects of desire that may exist in a modest form, perhaps as a pamphlet or even a 'unicorn', in other words, a book of which only one copy was ever printed. Not only does Burwood agree, but he proves extremely knowledgeable on the subject.
'Take the poet George Barker and the erotic writer Anais Nin,' he says. 'These and a whole lot of other people were co-opted by a millionaire collector and erotologist to write rude books for him, which he then published in a handful of copies. Barker told me about "his rarest book" which he'd never actually seen, but which he was sure existed somewhere.'
The rarest work of Aleister Crowley, Aceldama among them, are now the province of rich collectors, like Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.
'If you find them it's retirement money,' Burwood says, 'but no bookseller could base a career on tracking down these books because they only turn up once in a few years, if you're very lucky. In fact the way you make money in this game is to sell a lot of books that you see all the time.
'Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden is one of the rarest Crowleys. This is shocking porn written to amuse his wife on their honeymoon, or something like that. It's way over the top erotica and it's rare, very rare. According to the title page it's by the Reverend Deary*, or some such name. White Stains is another in the same vein, but not so rare.'
A book's scarceness can be more important than its author's name.
'I remember having a book of skiffle poetry which proclaimed it was "one of only five copies"- you see such pronouncements all over the internet,' Burwood says. 'I catalogued it for £45. It was by nobody, but I managed to sell it because t was from the Age of Skiffle. The subject matter and rarity was what sold it, not the author. Conversely, some of those little 'butterfly' books supposedly by Auden and others, but actually forged by the American poet and critic Dr Frederic Prokosch, were issued in editions of five or so, but now fetch a few grand each.'
Incredible rarity- even uniqueness- by itself is not enough, however. 'I'm offering on the web an example of a unicorn*,' Burwood admits. 'It's by Roy Notley, who was probably some sort of wag from the 50s who wore a beatnik jersey down to his knees and recited his own poetry in the local milk bar. Someone straight out of Tony Hancock. He probably produced this one copy to impress a girl he fancied. I only want £40 for this unique, slim, hardback but there's no interest. If you could tie it into the beatnik era it would be saleable, but I don't think it has even that virtue. It might take a hundred years to sell.'
Occasionally books that don't exist can be in greater demand than books that do. A common haunt of the unicorn is the film industry, where a book is mocked up by the prop department for a particular scene. Burwood, of course, has examples at his fingertips.
'In a movie called The Edge, Anthony Hopkins is shown reading How to Survive in the Woods, and I've been deluged with requests for it.' he says. 'Some have even claimed that they've read it! But it doesn't exist. In ...Sex and the City, a character is shown reading a book,' he says. 'Obviously, the book doesn't actually exist and yet people email me begging me to find a copy.' Burwood wasn't the only person deluged with requests. In fact, demand was so great for the book Love Letters of Great Men that several mainstream publishers rushed to release titles under that name.

ROMANCING THE STONE

Technically, the one-off film creations are both unicorns and ghosts- advertised but never printed. On the subject of the latter, I'm delighted to learn that some of the titles in Bizarre Books...one of the funniest books ever published- are ghosts too. 'There's a guy in San Francisco who swears he found a book called The Romance of Proctology, but I don't believe this exists,' Burwood says.
Books by madmen or cranks, however, is a growth area and well served by Bizarre Books.
'Martin Stone once reckoned he found a book which contended that some pub in Berkshire called The Old Bull and Bush, or something, was the Centre of The Universe,' Burwood laughs. 'This wasn't a joke. The bloke was convinced about it.'
Then there is Crook Frightfulness. This was published in Birmingham under the pseudonym 'A Victim' in 1932. 'The author's account of hearing imaginary voices of "crooks" that meant him harm sounds ludicrous to us, but the writer was a bit of a sad case- undoubtedly a paranoiac,' Burwood says. 'Today he'd be given a pill and told to go away. A jacketed copy is on the web for £400. I got £100 for mine. It's part of a literature of abnormal mental states, which is quite collectible today. Even big players, like Maggs have asked me if I've got any books by madmen. It's very sexy, you might say.'

*NOTES. 'Unicorn' is a charming mistake that crept in--the word should be UNICUM. It is hardly ever used because you seldom see them (just like unicorns!). The actual pseudonym used by the Great Beast was Reverend C. Verey. It's a slim book of verse and I need it for a customer if you spot one. More to follow...

Fuzz Acid and Flowers Revisited...

Vernon Joynson. FUZZ ACID AND FLOWERS REVISITED: a Comprehensive Guide to American Garage Psychedelic and Hippie Rock (1964-1975). Borderline Productions, 2004.

Current Selling Prices
$150+ /£100 +

MUSIC REFERENCE/ ROCK/ PSYCHEDELIA
A hefty large format paperback with an exhaustive list of American 60s bands most of whom are completely forgotten. Anyone who was in any of these bands (25000+ persons) is a potential punter for the book. Something of a 'sleeper' - it looks like a £20 book but worth five times that. Almost all books by Vernon Joynson are much sought after - Tapestry of Delights, Up Yours! (punk history)The Acid Trip: A Complete Guide to Psychedelic Music and Dreams, Fantasies and Nightmares from Far Away Lands. The man must have a serious record collection.

Perusing the book one notes the zany names -Tonto's Expanding Headband, Starvation Army Band ('...of which little is known...') Roamin' Togas, Pugsley Munion, Children of the Mushroom, The Bean Denturies, Byron and the Mortals etc., There are bands with identical names identifiable only by the state they came from and some with very similar names- e.g. 'The Boss Tweeds and The Boss Tweads--the former's song 'Faster Pussy Cat, Kill! Kill! inspired a Russ Meyer movie and provided the name for a 1980s sleaze rock band. There were rumours in the summer of 2008 that the great Tarantino was going to reshoot this movie. The time has come.



Other great rock reference books are Julian Cope's Krautrock Sampler and Asbjornsen's Scented Gardens of the Mind (also from Borderline) - "A guide to the modern era of progressive rock (1968-1980) in more than 20 European countries." A copy on ABE is priced at £275, the kind of price it takes to stop it selling entirely. However it is now a three figure books as is Cope's Sampler. Dave Rimmer's 'The Rare Soul Bible: A Northern Soul A-Z' is highly elusive and probably worth £100, our last copy went like a bullet at £60. Joynson's book, by the way, values some of the records it lists with some worth $1500 or more (a category described as 'only a handful exist and they are very sought after...') However most records, even the highly obscure, are of very modest value indeed. Just like books.