Collecting John Minton

BOHEMIAN, NEO-ROMANTIC ARTIST/ SUICIDE

I guess most people’s introduction to the work of John Minton are those vignette line drawings in Elizabeth David’s first book, A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) or perhaps her follow-up, French Country Cooking, but I think I first came across his work when I was urged in the early seventies to look out for the bright covers of those Penguin New Writing paperbacks by a fellow student John Archer, who later ended up as head of BBC Arts TV in Scotland. I remember him rooting out three or four copies from a pile of dog eared paperbacks outside a junk shop in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. I took the hint and began myself to seek out copies, which back then seldom cost more than 5p each.




Minton belongs with those other British Neo-Romantic artists—Sutherland, Piper, Craxton, Ayrton, Colquhoun, McBryde, and assorted lesser lights, who seemed to dominate, not only the pages of Penguin New Writing, but just about every other little magazine of the period. All except Craxton have been the subjects of biographies —the two Roberts, Colquhoun and Macbryde, being the latest .The fact that Minton, who was essentially an illustrator, has had the rare honour of being chronicled by the acclaimed Bloomsburyite Frances Spalding, is a telling testament to his cult status.

His greatest influence was Samuel Palmer, though equally had Graham Sutherland not lived it is unlikely that Minton would have developed in the way he did. Unlike Sutherland, Minton would have been too young to have been inspired by the ground-breaking Samuel Palmer exhibition of 1926, though no doubt he came to know Palmer and his fellow ‘Ancients ‘ through the exhibition catalogue and indirectly through Sutherland’s pastoral etchings of the 1920s, which were re-interpretations of Palmer’s vision. And like all his fellow Neo-Romantics he saw the significance of Sutherland’s ‘Entrance to a Lane ‘(1939) as a symbol of an English romantic revival So, Minton’s present popularity seems wedded to that of Palmer-- and as long as the English continue to be in love with the pastoral dream, Minton will remain a collected illustrator. But there are other factors that make him attractive. He was gay and depressed/repressed with it. He had a private income ( scion of the famous crockery company ), which gives him an added allure and he was a veteran of the Soho and Fitzrovian drinking sets, which are also currently in vogue.

He is probably at the height of his popularity just now, if the prices in ABE are any indication. His most celebrated book is probably Time Was Away (1948), Alan Ross’s diary of a holiday in Corsica. Geoffrey Grigson ( who was ambivalent towards neo-romanticism) absolutely slated it in a review, but it cannot be denied that this unremarkable narrative is improved by Minton’s 52 full page illustrations, eight of which are in glorious colour. Expect to pay between £70 and £90 for a copy without wrapper, to double that for a copy with one, though any Corsican bandit might shrink from asking the £250 that Clearwater demands for their near-perfect copy. I think I shelled out forty pence for my wrapper- free copy, but that was thirty odd years ago.



Other high points include the charming vignettes of Arcadian epicurean bliss in the aforementioned A Book of Mediterranean Food by St Elizabeth of David, a perfect first of which retails on ABE at a tasty $1,200,though fans of the artist prepared to tolerate a second impression with or without grease spots could save a bit of cash. Minton also illustrated ( with Denton Welch ) Contemporary Cookery by someone called Doris Lytton Toye. Contemporary novels with Minton illustrations come in at around £40 - £60, though other, more celebrated fiction, such as Alan Fournier’s The Wanderer (1947) at $200 and Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1947 ) at $133 are visually a bit special. Also worth tracking down are copies of the forties arts magazine Counterpoint, which features work by all the usual forties suspects. Copies in poor condition can be had for £30 or less, but mint ones can cost as much as £ 80. But if you are just looking for Penguin New Writing, there are loads of copies around for £2 or less. Lastly, it’s worth keeping an eye out for a sleeper—certain dealers on ABE offering copies of the dull sounding Football Association Book For Boys (1949), for prices ranging from £5 - £30, don’t seem to have noticed that Minton was one of the illustrators. The only one who has noticed is the astute Peter Ellis, who asks a socking $140 for his copy. [R.M.Healey]



Thanks Robin. I always look out for Minton d/ws (mint in d/w). He seems to have done a lot. Above is his jacket for The Scamp by Roland Camberton, one of Iain Sinclair's favourites. Barry Miles has a new book named after the Clash's tedious song 'London Calling.' It is a good account of London's counterculture since the Second World War and John Minton turns up there as a member of the raffish hard drinking Colony Room crowd. Robert Irwin in his T.L.S. review, a sort of kindly hatchet job, says:-

'Miles presents Minton as a “character” who was better at talking than painting, and a man who could not hold his drink. According to Miles, “today no-one has heard of Minton”. Well, I have. I believe that he was a superb illustrator of books, and I do not regard book illustration as a minor art form.

You can buy a Minton painting for less than a 100th of a Freud and 200th of a good Bacon. Whether that is a good investment I'm not sure, art is tricky right now. Best to buy books. A propos des bottes the American bookdealer Breslauer destroyed a Lucian Freud portrait of himself because it was unflattering - he objected to the way Freud had painted his double chin. Breslauer was one of the richest dealers who have ever lived but art history will not look kindly on this act, nor his heirs.

The portait above is by Cecil Beaton. The image middle left is a London Transport poster by Minton from the 1950s.

Do judge a book by its cover...

Some gratuitous advice for dealers, collectors and people of the book -some of it untested and some possibly erroneous. Inspired by Nelson Algren's three bits of advice in his 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side -"Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own." The woman in question may well have been Simone de Beauvoir with whom Algren was in a triangulated relationship, the third person being Jean Paul Sartre. Whether she had more problems than Algren is a moot point. By all accounts Sartre and Algren got on well... Anyway here goes with some bookish advice, caveats and absolute no-nos.

I. Do judge a book by its cover. Don't spend ages looking through every book to see if it is worth buying, avoid the recent books of major publishers, off copies of books of this century, ex library, fat books, memoirs of celebrities, politicians and nobs. Avoid all book club, Reader's Union, Folio Society, Franklin Mint and Heritage books (unless foolishly cheap). Almost all recent novels can be ignored...

2. Don't judge a book by its cover. If you find something worthwhile look under the jacket (if it has one) and check contents for underlinings, non authorial annotations, torn or missing pages, stamps, remants of attempts to disguise their ex library status and simple things like missing rear endpapers. Also look for good things like an unnoticed association, loosely inserted letters, ephemera and $100 bills. Do not, as one of our customers used to do, start shaking books to see what falls out -he was after bus tickets.

3. Don't buy from dealers who threaten legal action in their catalogue descriptions. Can say no more. A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

4. Distrust dealers who describe books as 'extra fine.' 'Super fine' is equally problematic. In my opinion fine is as good as it gets, if you want to go one better 'as new' is acceptable. Books in new bookshops are fine, or 'as new' -it can't get any better; 'mint' is also suspect being associated with coins, sometimes comics.

5. Avoid exaggerated or ingratiating descriptions. Anyone who describes Churchill's World War Two as 'very rare' is seriously ignorant or misguided. We also know that WSC was 'a very great man.' Likewise any book where 20 dealers have fine copies is not rare. They may be expensive, in which case they fall into the category 'common rare book.' Anyone buying an expensive edition of Ulysses doesn't want to hear that it is "...perhaps the Greatest Novel written in the Twentieth Century and certainly one of the Rarest volumes sought by collectors. Ulysses is a work of towering genius and of inestimable importance." Resist such blandishments.

6. Take a walk on the wild side. In a new town if you are seeking books don't assume they are all in the main square or even in bookshops. Antique shops and junk shops have to be checked out. Avoid those with grubby old books with notices like 'appraised at $200.' Most appraisers are ignorant slimeballs.

7.Avoid dealers who describe a book as 'good for its age.' It almost always indicates a lousy copy. Condition standards do not change because a book is 50 years old. Even 100 year old books can turn up in fine condition.

To be continued. Suggestions welcome.

Céline, the Glitter paradox and writing in public...

I have the outlines of a piece somewhere about writers who wrote in public; sadly I cannot work up the enthusiasm to finish it so am using it here. The most famous is J.K. Rowling, writing and keeping warm in an Edinburgh cafe, then T.S. Eliot putting the finishing touches to The Waste Land in a seaside shelter (image below) now the subject of a preservation order -('On Margate sands I can connect nothing with nothing.') Samuel Beckett would write on the back blanks of post office forms while hanging out in Parisian post offices, Scott Turow wrote his first novel Presumed Innocent riding the commuter train to and from New York. The oddest example was told to me by a customer from the Medway town of Chatham. There was a cafe there where Louis-Ferdinand Céline had sat writing one of his novels. He had lived, even married in London, so it was possible. Maybe somewhere in London there is an old pie and mash shop where Rimbaud and Verlaine (residents here in the summer of 1873) wrote poetry.

Celine is of course a towering figure in world lit -Bukowski wrote "'first of all read Céline. The greatest writer of 2,000 years." He was championed by the Beats -both William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg visited him in his Paris apartment during the 1950s and he is regarded second only to Proust among French writers. He became virulently antisemitic - in his 1938 work L'Ecole des Cadavres he calls for a Franco-German alliance in order to counter the pact between British intelligence and "the international Jewish conspiracy". Here you have what I call the Gary Glitter paradox -- do we stop listening to his music because of what we now know about his life? In the case of Celine, his antisemitism has not stopped him being admired by Jewish writers like Ginsberg and George Steiner. In the TLS of 12/2/10 with Celine on the cover ('Once again, Celines hour') George Steiner reviews a new Gallimard volume of his letters. He invokes an amazing story from WW2, possibly apocryphal although Celine is known to have claimed that Hitler was Jewish- it is a scene worthy of Mel Brooks or more likely Quentin Tarantino with the part of Celine played by a demented Cleese:

"At a soirée in the German legation, he leaps to his feet and performs a dazzling imitation of the Fuhrer's voice and gestures, and instructs his terrified hosts that Hitler will lose the war because he is not anti-Semitic enough! The assembled dignitaries are said to have scattered in panic…"

What of Celine values? In my cautious judgement he is a buy and will rise in value. As time goes by the ghastliness of a person's life tends to matter less, and can even enhance interest, he also appears to be joining the list of the giants of the last century along with Borges, Nabokov, Proust, Kafka, Joyce etc., He was admired by Queneau, Jean Genet Le Clézio, Robbe-Grillet, Barthes, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Billy Childish, Henry Green, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey. A Canadian dealer wants a gamey £10,000 for a trade first edition of Voyage au bout de la Nuit inscribed to surrealist publisher George Reavey. Although not in good enough condition to tempt French collectors (who are less impressed by signatures than us) it is not totally unthinkable it might sell. In a 1971 George Sims catalogue a Celine manuscript (5 pages from a late work heavily revised) appeared at £35, then the equivalent of £650. If sold now it could make £5000, representing an impressive return. Steiner singles out Celine's late works as masterpieces with scenes which ('using the word with care') can be qualified as Shakespearean.

Collecting Enid Blyton

Current Selling Prices
£3 to £3000+


Enid Blyton is still one of the most read children’s authors. And that’s official. Although her heyday was fifty or more years ago, children are still lapping up her books, despite the efforts of the PC apparatchiks, including the BBC, who apparently blackballed her ( ‘ fourth-rate, don’t you know ‘) for thirty years. More significantly, adults are still collecting firsts of her titles, which have sold more than 600 million copies worldwide and have ( according to one source ) been made available in 3,544 translations. So, Blyton has answered her critics, at least in terms of sales, even J.K. Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson Helen Cresswell and Roald Dahl have some way to go.

Born in 1897 above a shop in Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London (blue plaque), the daughter of a cutlery salesman, Blyton trained as a teacher and it was during this period that she published her first story in Teacher’s World aged 20. Blyton’s middle name was versatility. She began with poetry, then in the late thirties turned to adventure stories that catered for all age groups. At the same time she was producing countless fairy stories, pop-up books and other material for pre-school and early school-aged kids, including her best known creation, Noddy. Much of her huge output is not well known and indeed the full Blyton bibliography cannot fail to impress even the most sour-faced anti-Blytonite. It suggests that the woman just couldn’t stop writing, which may explain why she never had time for her own children.

Going against the trend a little, the earliest Blyton titles can be cheaper than firsts of the middle period , rare editions of which in good condition are breathtakingly expensive. Copies of Teacher’s World can be had for a mere £8 and in you can find them, £35 or so will buy you issues of Nash and Pall Mall magazine, where her work appeared in 1917 and 1918.Not surprisingly, her first published book commands a high price. The one copy of Child Whispers (1922), a pamphlet size collection of her verse, in a wrapper is listed in ABE at a very adult $2,400. Skip a year to her second book and the price plummets. Real Fairies is almost identical in format and size, has the same publisher ( Savile & Co ), but there seem to be more copies around and on ABE prices range from £60 for a poor copy of the hardback to £141 for a ‘ super copy ‘ from the Blyton specialists Rose’s & Stella’s Books, who also ask £132 for a ‘super copy ‘of Silver and Gold (1927), another verse collection featuring truly charming black and white drawings by Ethel Everett, a truly gifted artist who deserves to be better known.


Blyton’s greatest creations were of course, The Famous Five, the Secret Seven and Noddy. I was shamelessly brought up on all three, and can still visualise the Eileen Soper illustrations that accompanied the Famous Five books. Most of these adventures were actually published during the last world war, when doubtless children liked to be thrilled by rumours of spies and tunnels to caves and double agents posing as shopkeepers, and mad scientists - all hilariously parodied by The Comic Strip chums on Channel Four ('hot buttered crumpets and lashings of ginger beer') and now sent up in Viz magazine. Most of the stories have dated rather charmingly. I remember being astonished to read around 1962 that the Famous Five had to watch TV in someone else’s house because Uncle Quentin didn’t have a set. We’d had ours since 1951 !

Presumably it’s the well heeled baby-boomers who are now buying the firsts in these series. Five on a Treasure Island (1942) was the first Famous Five adventure, but as with most sought after firsts, on ABE you have to plough through innumerable horrible library copies of sixth, seventh and eighth editions, crayoned-in copies of ditto, charmless paperbacks etc to get to the very few really nice copies in wrappers, all of which fetch big bucks. A dealer in Leicester, an undoubted specialist in this field hass two copies described as having ‘ highly skilled archival restoration.' They ‘ show well ‘, to use his regrettable jargon. He rates this title as ‘very scarce’ and wants a stupefying £3,250 and £3,750 for his copies , two grand more than the price quoted in the current Rare Book Price Guide 2010. Perhaps it’s time the Famous Five investigated his fiendish plans for the Blyton market.

The Secret Seven series seems to be slightly less popular. At Seaside Cottage is rated at a mere £30-40. Others, depending on condition. command modest sums of between £5 and £40.The much collected Mystery Books are similarly cheap, even with wrappers, except for the first title, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage, which is rated for some reason at £650 – £750 with wrapper and a risible £10 without-- a good example of the Brighton Rock Syndrome (BRS)—an incurable condition characterised by an irrational obsession with wrappers ( more of this in a later blog ).



And if you are a true fan of Blyton you’ll probably also want to own some of her less well-known titles. You could, for instance, thrill to the adventures of Jo, Bessie, Fanny and Dick in the queer lands at the top of the Magic Faraway Tree (1943), although you’ll need £1,718 to read about them in one first edition from ABE. Until recently Jonkers had another, which despite a ‘ small swirl ‘ in green biro on an endpaper was priced at around £2,000.

But if all you can afford is a first of Noddy you can secure one for the appropriately small price of £8. The same can be said of the many other more common titles by Blyton, especially if they are child-damaged. The plain truth is that most of her huge output is cheap enough and most bookshops with a children’s section will have firsts, albeit somewhat battered, for £3 or less. [R.M. Healey]



Wise and timely words Robin. I am old enough to remember the fuss about Jimmy Edwards remark that he "liked to curl up in front of the fire with Enid Blyton." It was echoed recently by a row about remarks by Frankie Boyle about another national treasure, Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington, ("like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon" and worse ). I once had an estate agent's brochure for a mansion that Enid had owned, it was a good size but nothing like Galsworthy's Kingston Hill palace, Hardy's country house or Edgar Wallace's villa. It was bought by a developer, torn down and replaced with flats. No blue plaque there. I used to subscribe to the DNB which tells you how much each person left in their will (especially those who died in the last 100 years). If anyone subscribes, or has the 60 volume set (now only £1500) about their person, they might let us know what Enid left (and Galsworthy while you have the book open.)

I remember being surprised that Agatha Christie left less than £1 million. Possibly Sir Max Mallowan, as an archaeologist, was high maintenance. Edgar Wallace left nothing but debts all of which were paid off within 2 years from royalties. Best selling writers have little motivation to save, as the money rolls in for years, way after their death. We used to have an Uncle Quentin who came in the shop, but that's another story...

12 Must-Have iPhone Apps for Book Lovers

[Guest post contributed by Anna Miller.] There’s no doubt that Apple has taken the world by storm with its iProducts, and love them or hate them, there’s also no doubt that we admire their beauty and envy their owners. But what’s making more news than the products themselves are the apps that have been written for the devices that this tech giant dreams up every now and then – from useless to must-have, from controversial to boring, and from innovative to also-ran, a host of applications have been written for the iPhone ever since Apple opened up its SDK to third party developers. And if you’re a book lover like me, you’re definitely going to appreciate the apps that have been written with us in mind, 12 of the most interesting of which I’ve listed belong:

1. Kindle: This great app not only allows you to save hundreds of dollars when you don’t want to buy the actual Kindle device, it also allows you to sync your Kindle books on both your iPhone (or iPod) and your Kindle if you do own one. Using this, you can buy ebooks from Amazon and read them on your phone.

2. B&N Bookstore: This app allows you browse through the books available at the online Barnes and Noble store, read their reviews, and also buy and download them to your iPhone.

3. eReader: A popular and free e-book reader for the iPhone, this app allows you to browse through online libraries and bookstores and read any of the more than 100,000 available titles.

4. BookSearch: If you’re worried about the cost of an online book, this app allows you to use either your GPRS connection or WiFi to search for cheaper versions of the book at other stores.

5. Classics: As the name suggests, this app offers access to and lets classic lovers read their favourite books on their phone.

6. IndieBound: This app shows you a list of current bestsellers in both the hardbound and paperback forms. You’re also able to search for traditional bookstores based on the zip code, a feature that allows you to locate your nearest bookstore when on vacation or out of town.

7. Stanza: This app supports the e-pub book format and allows you to download free books stored in this format from various online domains.

8. Local Books: This app allows you to find bookstores and libraries near you – if you love books and want to have constant access to them, this is the app for you.

9. Library List: If you have a virtual library on your phone, you’re bound to love this nifty app – it lets you mark which books you’ve read and which you’re yet to read and also allows you to jot down notes for each book.

10. TomeRaider: This app allows you to download educational e-books and other resources like dictionaries, encyclopaedias and guidebooks that are available in the digital format.

11. SnapTell: If you want to know everything there is to know about a book, this app does the trick – once you click a photo of the book’s cover, you’re provided with details like the price, rating and description of the book. (See left, just loaded it for free--selective but awesome- ED.)

12. Clickwheel Comic Reader: As the name says, this one is for those who love comics – it’s free and brings your favourite characters to your iPhone screen.


[Thanks Anna. Great stuff--have downloaded Stoptell and BookSearch already (both Free.) Anna Miller is a journalist who writes on the topic of online degree. She welcomes your comments at her email id: anna.miller009@gmail.com]

Iphone Apps

I was in a noisy pub in Covent Garden the other day and through the shouts for beer and the general post work rowdiness I could vaguely hear an old Pogues song coming from a juke box the other side of the room. I wasn't sure what it was called but dimly remembered it from the late 80s. An American fantasy collector I was with held up his Iphone for a second and declared it was Streams of Whiskey a ditty about writer and bevy artist Brendan Behan. What an app! I have an Iphone with a few apps and a few books to read in waiting rooms (300 short stories for £1) but this guy had a 100 apps including one that let him paint like Jackson Pollock. He also had one Iphone for England and another for America to avoid punitive roaming charges. I suspect he has private money.

The posting above is a guest entry by Anna Miller full of useful app info for bookloving Iphone users. What I currently need is an app that works when you point your Iphone at a book - it immediately catalogues it with condition, a puff and the right price, then uploads it to online book malls. A little later it sells it and puts the money in the bank for you. This can almost be done already with books with a barcode on the back (or a good clear pictorial cover - see the amazing Snaptell) but I need one that can handle leather bound books, incunabula and livres d'artistes.

Bryher. Region of Lutany (1914)

Annie Winifred Ellerman. (Bryher) REGION OF LUTANY. Chapman & Hall, London, 1914.

Current Selling Prices
$1500 /£1000

POETRY
A serious sleeper and now almost impossible to find. The writer's first book. I once called up the British Library copy and as I recall it is like a little gift book, 16mo in size ( the Bodleian copy gives the height as 13 cms which is taller than I recall--possibly it had yapped edges) published in limp suede covers. I have never seen or heard of a copy in commerce and my evaluation may be cautious. Here are a few lines:

Where is the way to thee, 
Region of Lutany?

I cried to the swallow and lark in their flight,

I cried at the dawn, in the day, and the night,

I cried to the cloud, and the wave, and the tree,

None knew the way to thee,

Mistress imperious,
O thou mysterious

Region of Lutany.

A cryptic poem reading almost as if it had been channelled from another world. I imagine that there are a lot of lutes in Lutany. Bryher mentions lutes in another poem in the book Poem Addressed to Corfu:

Are thy quivering sea-shells an argent lute,

Strung with the whispering amethyst spray,

Breathing such songs to the dawn-lit bay,

That even the wind of the South is mute...

' Bryher' (Annie Winifred Ellerman 1894 - 1983) was born out of wedlock at Margate in Kent; she was her parents' eldest child and only daughter. Her father Sir John Ellermann was said to be the richest man in England (like Nancy Cunard the money was from shipping.) She travelled in Europe as a child, to France, Italy and Egypt. At the age of fourteen she was at boarding school and at around this time her mother and father married. On one of her travels, Ellerman journeyed to the Isles of Scilly off the southwestern coast of England and acquired her future pseudonym from her favourite island, Bryher, home of Hell Bay.

Like many writers and intellectuals of her time she migrated to Paris. With her husband, the American writer Robert McAlmon, she founded the Contact Press. Bryher was an unconventional figure in Paris and was acquainted, even intimate, with Ernest Hemingway. Bisexual, she has been linked with many men and women of that period, including James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach and Berenice Abbott. Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers, including Joyce and Edith Sitwell. She also helped with finance for the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company (started by Sylvia Beach) and started a film company POOL Productions. She also helped provide funds to purchase a flat in Paris for struggling artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven the ultra eccentric Dadaist artist and poet. Shakespeare and Co published her brother's anti-public school book Why do They Like it ? also something of a sleeper and one of their very few non Joycean publications. Sir John Ellermann wrote it under the name of E L Black at the age of 16. He also wrote The Families and Genera of Living Rodents. There are two decent copies of the Shakespeare and Company work online at £450 and £500. I sold my last one at £300 in the later Blair years. The highest price being demanded for a Bryher book is a stroppy £2400 for a decent jacketed US first of her 1920 novel Development. This from a firm who seem never to reduce their prices so it may stay as a useful marker until, say, Blair is banged up for war crimes in the Eurozone.

Bryher is now slightly neglected but she has her admirers and her early works are uncommon and collectable. The academic Jayne Marek describes her as an 'invisible' woman". For JM Bryher is 'even less recognized as a writer than a patron: most of her texts are now out of print and have received little critical attention. Her novels, poems, memoirs, and criticism, together spanning much of the twentieth century, form a significant contribution to the development of Anglo-American modernism, particularly through their French and Imagist influences, and their explorations of topics including women's education, gender mutability, psychoanalysis, and film technology...' Bryher's contribution to avant garde and experimental cinema is well documented. With the poet H.D. and director Kenneth Macpherson (her second husband) she started the magazine Close Up, and formed the POOL cinema group to write about and make films. Only one POOL film survives in its entirety, titled Borderline (1930), starring H.D. and Paul Robeson. In common with the Borderline novellas, the film explores extreme psychic states and their relationship to surface reality. Another short film has recently emerged and can be seen in its entirety at the Beinecke Library site. The shadowy shot above is a still from the film Monkey Moon a silent film featuring two of Macpherson's and Bryher’s pet monkeys. Humans are absent with Bryher or possibly Macpherson only seen in silhouette or as a stout pair of shoes (Lobbs?) walking towards the camera. For me it was a very slow 8 minutes - to enjoy it you have to be a monkey person.


Bryher's 1929 book Film Problems of Soviet Russia can make £200, the film magazine Close Up can make £40 an issue and a complete run is valuable and fairly easy to sell... Almost all books published by Pool are worth money and a few are great rarities (mostly by H.D. --rare, but somewhat hard to sell at ambitious prices.) Her second book Lament for Adonis, Bion the Smyrnaean (London: A.L. Humphreys, 1918 ) is currently on the web at a £1000. It is one of a very few copies specially printed on handmade paper, and specially bound, for the author's use. It might sell, but Lutany has a greater caché and can also be sold to collectors of modernist rarities and first books - the Black Tulip of Bryheriana. Her later works, historical novels, are hard to sell -even signed ( I have had 3 signed novels, unsold and online, at modest prices for many moons.) It is gratifying to discover that with all the wealth from her father (her brother got even more and kept a permanent suite at the Savoy) she did so much good. The Wikiman informs us - 'Bryher used her wealth and influence to rescue innocent people, including many writers and intellectuals, from the Nazis during World War II. She was very private about her efforts to assist her friends in their flight from Nazi-occupied areas and so she is not commonly recognized for this remarkable effort.'

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Michael Cooper. Blinds & Shutters (1990) Part 2

The image above is Michael Cooper's shot for the Stones Satanic Majesties album. If you click on it goes to a good size and you can make out the faces of John, Paul, George and Ringo to the left and right within the gilt encrusted psychedelic decorations. Cooper was one of a handful of elevated souls who were friendly with both groups. His self portrait shows a wistul groover almost Edwardian in his striped blazer - like something out of Kind Hearts and Coronets or Mr. Polly. Terry Southern said of him -“Michael Cooper was a person of tremendous love and vision...I do not expect to see his like again.”

In 2002 we catalogued a copy and after a few months (and some haggling) sold the black and yellow opus for £400. We catalogued it thus:

Michael Cooper. BLINDS & SHUTTERS. Genesis/ Hedley, Guildfrord, 1990. 4to. 368 pages. 14" x 10" Hardcover leather/buckram in yellow and black in a matching hand made silk screened solander box. Limited edition of 5000 copies of which this is No.3087. A weighty photographic record of Michael Cooper's work. Michael Cooper was a 60’s beautiful person (obit 1972) and friend of the Rolling Stones, Robert Fraser etc., Every copy has at least 9 different autographs of subjects with Bill Wyman being the only constant. This copy is signed by David Hockney, Don Bachardy, Jenny Boyd, Spencer Davis, Terry Doran, Derek Taylor, Harry Nilsson, Adam Cooper, Bill Wyman and Colin Self and Ann Marshall. Solander box has liftable flap at centre - each copy having different small photo beneath - this has Marianne Faithful with bespectacled man. Book is about fine, box is slightly rubbed at corners o/w also about fine. A lavish production and the ultimate record of this gilded period.

No two copies are alike and the value depends on who signed your copy + the photo under the liftable flap (Beatles are best.) Here is a random list of signers from copies I have seen. It is unlikely to be comprehensive and we would welcome news of any other signers. A merry galaxy of 60's movers, shakers, posers, celebs and characters:

Bill Wyman, Colin Self, Neil Aspinall, Adam Cooper, Terry Doran, Richie Havens, Allen Jones, John Mayall, Richard Merkin, Billy Al Bengston, Gerald Malanga, Bridget Riley, Steve Winwood, Michael McClure, Sandy Lieberson, Spencer Davis, Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Harry Nilsson, Jenny Boyd, Jo Bergman, John Dunbar, Richard Hamilton, Anita Pallenberg, George Harrison, Pattie Clapton, Peter Blake, Francis Bacon, Donald Cammell, Anthony Caro, Allen Ginsberg, Astrid Kirchherr, Claes Oldenburg, Perry Richardson, Ringo Starr, Jurgen Vollmer, Klaus Voorman, Eric Clapton, Christopher Gibbs, Keith Richard, Nigel Waymouth, Ann Marshall, Marianne Faithfull, Larry Rivers, Brian Auger, Larry Bell, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Pattie Clapton, Jann Howarth, John Mayall, Bridget Riley, Terry Southern, Kenneth Anger, Don Bachardi, David Hockney, Graham Nash, Derek Taylor, Julie Driscoll, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Nicholas Monro.

Francis Bacon is possibly the Button Gwinnet of the pack, although it is said that the Warhol signature does most for the value of the book. Colin Self is the second most common and Peter Blake manages to get his oar in on most copies. I have heard of a limited edition of 250 copies lettered in roman numerals but it doesnt seem to differ in any way.

VALUE? The book can go for anything from £400 to £2000. A chancer on Amazon has one one at £2500 with Burroughs as one of the signers--he claims that WB signed very few. The number of people willing to fork out 50 hard won £50 notes to get at Burroughs signature is likely to be miniscule...Warhol's signature has a proven track record of turbo charging the book towards £2000. Beatle signatures are good, Keith Richards probably helps and Bacon is a name to conjure with.

OUTLOOK? Good. Even though there are 5000 out there they are actively traded and possibly growing in value. Ebay sees copies occasionally and multiple signed books tend to work with the punters there. Some people don't like Genesis books at all and they can be slow to shift unless you have the right ones, or the de luxe issues. They are seen as books for unsophisticated, celebrity obsessed arrivistes. For myself I am glad to buy them and also glad that the publishing company are vigorously knocking out new titles When buying them it is always worth checking with Genesis to see if they have any left. Blinds and Shutters is long gone however. The average age of collectors is about 40 and when these collector retire, move or die many copies may start to surface and some titles could prove a poor investment. Left is a photo of the unforgettable Talitha Getty leaviing a party with Stash (Stanislas) de Rola, princely son of Balthus. It is almost certainly not by Cooper, but the work of a nameless paparazzi, but it sums up 60s high style--these guys didn't get their kit from Gap. Photo removed by a noilly prat...as Logue said 'we will not argue about it in eternity.'

George Bourne, Change in the Village (1912)

Current Selling Prices £60-£80

George Bourne. CHANGE IN THE VILLAGE. (London, Duckworth & Co., 1912)

COUNTRY WRITERS / POLITICS / SOCIAL CHANGE
When Kevin McCloud in his brilliant recent TV documentary ‘ Slumming It ‘showed how happiness in the world’s biggest slum Dharavi derives not so much from rampant individualism, but more from the mutual support and community spirit engendered through shared space and shared values. Similarly, when sociologists and anthropologists attribute our present sense of alienation to the lack of community spirit---a theory also propounded in books like Tom Hodgkinson’s How to be Idle, and How to be Free, which adopt a mainly Kropotkinite anarchist perspective--- there is clearly something in the air, a sense perhaps that we are in the West at last examining whether membership of an advanced consumer society is what we truly want.

In the early years of the last century, galloping social and industrial changes prompted a similar debate. One of the most influential protagonists was the proto-socialist George Sturt (1863 – 1927),who from his base in Farnham, the former home of that other radical social commentator, William Cobbett, published Change in the Village (1912). Sturt, writing under his pseudonym George Bourne, surveyed Edwardian social and economic ‘progress’ from the perspective of a ruralist looking back to an era before the motor vehicle had ushered in a revolution in the social fabric of rural life. To him the 1880s he knew as a young man was a time when life had hardly changed for the rural labouring class for centuries, where the pleasures they shared remained untainted by industrial progress, and any problems and hardships were overcome, or at least mitigated, through community spirit and cooperation. But Sturt was no sentimentalist, and though he regrets the loss of what he calls ‘ the scene of a joyful and comely art of living ‘ he ( as a good Fabian ) ‘ would not go back ‘.

‘ I would not lift a finger, or say a word, to restore the past time, for fear lest in doing so, I might be retarding a movement which, when I can put these sentiments aside, looks like the prelude to a renaissance of the English country folk ‘

Of course, the Great War put paid to much of that; and perhaps as a response to Sturt and other rural commentators, in the days before and immediately after hostilities, there seems to have been a similar mood of wistfulness towards what was seen as a fast-disappearing world. So look out also for books by Major Gambier Perry, notably The Spirit of the Old Folk (1913), The Pageant of My Days and Allegories of the Land (1912), which come up occasionally. More challenging and a rarer book to find is Old and New in the Countryside (1920), where country house life at the turn of the century is viewed with mixed feelings by the redoubtable lady traveller Victoria de Bunsen, author of the better known The Soul of a Turk (1910). To de Bunsen the passing of the old order is inevitable:

‘ The War has brought everything to an end as we have known it. When the very foundations of European civilisation are rocking, can we hope to retain in its familiar guise any one of the old forms ? Surely the very face of the countryside will wear a different aspect in the time to come…under the engine of man’s rage for destruction ‘

De Bunsen deserves more attention than she has received but Sturt already has a high reputation, largely due to Frank Leavis and his writer-in-arms Denys Thomson, who played his wholesome rural values against rampant modern consumerism in their writings. And although Leavis the literary critic has been deeply out of fashion for many years, his promotion of Sturt seems to have paid off. ABE is crammed with various editions of Change in the Village and The Wheelwright’s Shop including some from the Caliban Press, which has been bringing out editions of Sturt for over thirty years. About four years ago I was thrilled to pick up for a mere 90p my first of Change in the Village in a charity bookshop. The only first of this title in ABE at present is priced at $112.There are firsts of two rare titles, The Ascending Effort (1910), a book on aesthetics, for £25.50 and an ex- library copy of William Smith, Farmer and Potter (1919) for an eye-watering £40, though this price reflects its strong appeal and rarity. I paid £1 for my copy years ago, but I was very lucky. [R. M. Healey]

Thanks Robin wise and timely words. I shall keep an eye out for these three. I note that Victoria de Bunsen came from a grand but radical family -- she was the sister of philanthropist Charles Roden Buxton who lived such a frugal lifestyle that, on walking tours in the south of England, he was sometimes mistaken for a tramp. This often happens to bookdealers down on their luck.

When this recession finishes (if it ever does) I trust that the renewed interest in community, altruism and less materialistic ways of living does not end with it. Let’s hope we don’t return to an era of total bastards in red braces swigging Bollinger and charging round in Aston Martins. Good to hear the sacred name Major Gambier Parry—I have a feeling I have a few on the net that could be repriced!

Michael Cooper. Blinds & Shutters (1990)

Michael Cooper. BLINDS & SHUTTERS. Genesis/ Hedley, Guildfrord, 1990.

Current Selling Prices
$350-$3000 /£500-£2000

PHOTOGRAPHY / ROCK MUSIC
A desirable photobook, from cool limited edition publisher Genesis, of the work of beautiful person and rock photographer Michael Cooper. Like all rock snappers - Mick Rock, Keith Morris, Chalkie Davis, Dominique Tarlé etc.,- he is beneath the Martin Parr radar but that doesn't stop the book changing hands at sizeable prices. Cooper is probably best known for shooting the cover of Sergeant Pepper and also the Stones drug addled response Satanic Majesty's Request. He had the dubious honour (healthwise) of being Keith Richard's closest friend and was with Jagger, Richard, Robert Fraser, Marianne Faithfull and Christopher Gibbs at the famous Redlands Bust. So opiated was the environment he moved in that it is amazing his pictures are in focus. He was also at the Stones French exile residence Villa Nelcote in 1973 but sadly was one of those troubadours who got killed before they reached Bombay-- he overdosed that year (some reports say suicide.)



Getting close to the Stones appears to have been a perilous business, some of Coopers photographs show whole gatherings of young groovers who are now long dead, exquisites, dandies, flower children--all broken butterflies and moths to fame --extending the lepidoptera metaphor George Melly called Cooper a "dragonfly that darted and hovered across these careless years." His photo below demonstrates the casualty rate- of this bunch only the indestructible Anita Pallenberg is still with us- from left you have Brian Jones, Nicki Browne, Bill Willis, Talitha Getty, John Paul Getty II and Anita all tripping on acid near Luggalor - a Gothic castle in the Wicklow mountains home of Tara Browne ('he blew his mind out in a car...').



Blinds and Shutters is one of the finest and most valuable of Genesis publications. More valuable are their editions du tete, the lavish de luxe productions some limited to 100 copies. The most famous are the two signed George Harrison books Fifty Years Adrift (1984) and I, Me, Mine (1980) both of which can sell at over £2000. Equally desirable, talking of broken butterflies, is the more recent Mick Rock volume of photos of Syd Barrett 'Psychedelic Renegades' the de luxe of which was fully subscribed form the get-go; amazingly it is signed by the madcap himself. Copies on Ebay signed by Syd can make £2500 [to be continued with a monumental list of all the signers of Blinds and Shutters--all copies are signed by Bill Wyman and eleven other 60s scenemakers and none of the 5000 are the same--the most valuable copies have the rarest signatures, its a minefield...] Below Cooper shoots Beaton snapping Keith by a pool in Marrakech, man.

Hesse, Eliot, Salinger: An Eternal Golden Braid

Thanks to Douglas Hofstadter of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame for the title of this interim posting. In May 1922 T.S. Eliot visited Hermann Hesse at his villa in Montagnola, an isolated Swiss village above Lake Lugano where Hesse had recently settled and where he was to live until his death in 1962. Eliot had been profoundly influenced by a slim volume of Hesse's Blick Ins Chaos ('In Sight of Chaos.') He refers to it in his notes to The Waste Land. In his essay "The Brothers Karamazov or The Downfall of Europe" Hesse had detected the emergence of a new type of man - 'the outcome of a primeval, occult Asiatic ideal'. He called him ''Russian Man' and he signifies the decline of Europe in a '...turning back to Asia' and 'turning away from every fixed morality and ethic.'


Ex Blondie musician and now gifted mystic writer, Gary Lachman, sees this type as the progenitor of such disparate characters as Crowley, Manson, Neal Cassady, Alan Watts etc., They can as easily become criminals as ascetics, and as Hesse says 'believe in nothing except the insane uncertainty of every belief.' Heavy stuff with a touch of wu-wu but Hesse was undeniably a seer. In 1953 he wrote an interesting piece praising Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Through reading the novel he finally understood the many letters he had been receiving from young American readers of his novel Steppenwolf. He sees Caulfield, despite his facade and the filth around him, as 'a completely beautiful pure lovable and loving soul..' The essay ends:

'Whether one reads this novel as the individual story of a half-grown problem child or as the allegory of a whole country and people, one will be led by the author along the beautiful road from dislike to understanding, from disgust to love. In a problematic world and time, poetry can achieve nothing higher.'

As for the 'golden braid' --it is theoretically possible to have a line of writers who praised one another going back to Chaucer. It might go something like this Salinger, Hesse, Eliot, Hardy, Wilkie Collins, Wordsworth, Blake, Burke, Sterne, Swift, Defoe, Wycherley, Milton, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and beyond--all were living when the other had published so could have praised (or noticed) their work. The trouble is the golden linking stops or stalls in forward mode with Salinger. The only author he is known to have praised is Hemingway (the feeling was mutual--Hem said of him "Jesus, he has a helluva talent"). I guess one could move sideways using Hemingway- who praised Cyril Connolly - who, in turn, praised all manner of younger writers.

TRIVIA. Hesse has a tribute site at MySpace and has 2,027 friends ('Click here to add Hermann Hesse as a friend.')

The Hofstadter book Gödel, Escher, Bach from Basic in New York 1979 now goes for $300 as a fine first in jacket - but always read the small print as most people selling are under the impression that first edition, ninth printing is almost as good as a true first and charge accordingly, whereas what they have is an almost worthless reprint fit only for reading.

In 1999, the bicentennial year of Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. A good effort with Nabokov having set the bar so high. Hofstadter did not bother adding 3 volumes of footnotes...

Hemingway and Salinger had a good exchange of letters in the mid to late 1940s. Value? Possibly a staggering sum.

That's Hermann's desk below.

Pevsner - Architectural Guides

BUILDINGS OF ENGLAND

Current Selling Prices
£4-£21

Is it in Pevsner ? What does Pevsner say ? Cries often heard among amateur architectural historians, church crawlers, and prospective owners of any building looking ‘ a bit Regency ‘, ‘ definitely Georgian ‘ or ‘possibly by Lutyens’. If it does turn out to be in the great man’s magisterial Buildings of England, or in the follow up volumes that dealt with the rest of the UK, there’ll doubtless be a premium to pay, though most house buyers would be happy to shell out for the privilege. Twenty seven years after his death Pevsner, the German-born workaholic, has become a national treasure about whose life few but his closest friend knew much at all. But now with the news that the long-awaited ( it was expected to appear in 2002 ) biography is due out later this year, any one who was ever curious about what drove him to complete one of the most celebrated series of books in the history of publishing will be able to find out.

Immer fleissig perfectly suits Pevsner, the assiduous Herr Professor Doktor of Betjeman and of every post-war anti-German chauvinist who ever resented the fact that six years after we defeated the Jerries a damned German was showing us how to appreciate our own buildings, some of which, ironically the Germans themselves had flattened. But the truth remains that had this Jewish academic never fled Hitler for England it is unlikely that any Englishman would have had the energy or chutzpah to take on such a necessary job—certainly not the slowcoach Howard Colvin, for all his erudition, and probably not Ian Nairn, who for all his brilliance, would have devoted too much time sampling the local brew.

Although the idea behind The Buildings of England was first mooted in 1936, it took until the Festival of Britain year of 1951 for the first title to appear. Pevsner had already had a hand in the series of King Penguins and Penguin Modern Painters and so for him to take charge of a series devoted to the architecture of Britain must have seemed a logical next step for the marketing men at Penguin. But to create the format that they did was more than shrewd marketing—it was a stroke of design genius. Part of the appeal of the volumes is their size and format. Pevsner’s only rival in the architectural field at that time---the pre-war Shell Guides and their successors, the Murray Architectural Guides---were closer to being coffee-table art books than the hold-in-your hand guides they aspired to be. Moreover, they were too expensive. The paperback format, cheapness and sheer utilitarian drabness of the Buildings of England volumes, with their truly execrable paper and po-faced snaps of buildings, perfectly suited the era of post-war austerity. You could slip a copy in your pocket as you trudged across fields in search of that castle or ruined church. And if a page got torn or if you dropped the book in the mud it didn’t matter much.

The men at Penguin were so confident of success that, according to one source, they printed 20,000 copies of the first few titles, which explains why copies of Cornwall, Nottinghamshire, Middlesex, North Devon, South Devon, London, Hertfordshire, and Derbyshire are so easy to
find. The earliest titles were priced at 3/6 and don’t appear to have been issued with jackets—at least I’ve never seen one—and the addition in 1954 ( for Essex )of a pictorial jacket for the paperback seems to have coincided with the introduction of the cloth-bound edition ( also with pictorial wrapper )to be published alongside the paperback version for a few more years.

Sales were slow at first but gathered momentum as word got around. Then, as the volumes got fatter, more informative and more expensive, the less informative Shell Guides remained dearer still, and proved less popular, though they were, as always, much more attractive visually. By the sixties the Shell marketing men , nervous at falling sales, considered closing the Guides down and Betjeman ( though not Piper, who was a friend of Pevsner’s ) became more irritated. Within twenty years the whole of England had been covered by Pevsner and his team ( not something that could be said of the Shell Guides )and the process of revision began. Prices rose to match those of the Shell Guides until in the eighties they exceeded their rivals in price. Today, titles in the Pevsner Architectural Guides series retail at around £35 new, though these are sometimes to be found modestly discounted. Pevsner would have been astonished at these high prices, but perhaps would have been equally proud that few would baulk at paying them. Such is the price of success.

Rare Pevsners ? Probably few, if any. Discovering very early titles with jackets would indeed be interesting , but the 1700 listings in ABE throw up nothing of the kind. Don’t expect to pay more than £10 for a paperback with a wrapper, or £20 for the fattest hardback in good condition with wrapper. Doubtless there are some ‘points’ to be hunted down in certain titles. My copy of Durham, for instance, has blank pages regularly interspersed throughout, as if for note-making. Perhaps it was a one-off. Perhaps not. [R.M.Healey]



Thanks Robin. ABE does show a few sell by numbers chancers asking over £50 but most keep them reasonable as there are a lot about. I remember a guy at a provincial fair putting out a box of fifty for £1 each. He was a children's book specialist and knew no better -- they went like snow off a dike as they say in Canada. Pevsners are a useful weathervane of a shop's pricing policy—if the dealer regularly charges over £15 (unless it is the actual county you are in or they are brand new) he might be a difficult type, possibly mercurial in temper and everything could be similarly overpriced—if his Pevsners are over £20 take it as a warning, if £25 or over leave fast without engaging in idle chat. Do not return. Of course if they are signed by Pevsner or annotated by Betjeman or Ian Nairn then stroppy prices may be in order...

ADVENTURES OF ROMNEY PRINGLE

Clifford Ashdown. (i.e. R. Austin Freeman & J.J. Pitcairn.) THE ADVENTURES OF ROMNEY PRINGLE. Ward Lock, London 1902.


Current Selling Prices
$4000+/ £2500+


DETECTIVE FICTION / MYSTERY
Legendary rarity. Queen's Quorum listed short stories of a gentleman thief in the Raffles tradition, although with no Bunny to soothe his brow. Ostensibly a literary agent, charming and handsome, he tended to rip off other crooks and makes enough to retire to Sandwich, a seaside hideaway also favoured by Simon Raven. Part of a mantra of mystery rarities like The Curious Mr Tarrant and Mysterious Affair at Styles that book runners like Martin Stone / Nicholas Lane used to hope to find for chump change in dull market towns and bear back to London for a few weeks of living high on the hog. Days gone by. It is worth examining books like these fairly closely -- because of their value they have often been mucked about with, lack a plate or have a page in facsimile, have been cannily recased with new endpapers or in some way are not quite the full shilling.

VALUE? Not quite as rare as Ellery Queen used to make out (only six copies known etc.,) but still a very useful 4 figure book in nice shape with 2 copies sold at £1K & £3K in the last 2 years, neither outstanding. RB Russell in his ' First Edition Prices' puts it at £1500. A very sharp copy should now command twice that; I had thought the the vogue for collecting old QQ fiction was a bit vieux jeu but in Feb 2009 there is only one copy online, an indifferent example with the front cover vignette perished and tobacco stains. If the tobacco has also left an odour that is another minus in today's market. It is priced at a gutsy $5000 and may have been there since summer, if not before. The quote from Ellery Q (used by all sellers of the book) is: 'Bibliophiles and book scouts have scoured England and America, seeking in the most likely and unlikely places; yet after 50 years of eagle - eyed and expert excavating, the recorded copies total exactly 6 - no more, no less.' Hyperbole--there were 4 copies through the web in 18 months (noted 2007). EQ did not have the advantage of the infobahn which has made certain books thought to be very rare into the merely rare. Otto Penzler also dismisses Queen's claim as 'incorrect' - nominating Victor L. Whitechurch's Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912) as one of a half dozen books rarer than Romney. A census of copies can often be inaccurate, except possibly in the case of 7 figure items like the Bay Psalm Book or First Folios, Caxton Chaucers or indeed Gutenberg's 'great bible of Mainz.'

I am grateful to R. Austin Freeman collector Mark Sutcliffe for a photo of the true first which can also show up in red with no priority established ( a presentation copy on publication day might do the trick.) Mark notes that '...the white vignette of Pringle at the lower right front corner tends to flake away to a greater or lesser degree.' The later or, more likely, remainder binding, shown left, is a little shorter and narrower and has completely different boards. Mark suspects this was a standard format used by Ward, Lock at the time. There was also a Colonial issue in 1902 (red wrappers) and a 1903 paperback (white, pictorial wrappers), both difficult. A first in the dust-wrapper would be a miraculous find, please report any sightings.

Quest for J.D. Salinger 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quest for J.D. Salinger

A great writer is gone. At 91 he'd had a good innings, possibly achieving longevity through a macrobiotic diet. The obituaries in the broadsheets and online dailies have made fascinating reading. Obituarists can't be seen to say the same thing as the next guy so have to dig for ever more recondite info to flesh out their subjects. Did you know that Salinger was a bit of a practical joker? He would wet his fingers with water and then pretend to sneeze behind someone while flicking the water at the back of their neck. A good wheeze, but timing is everything. On the subject of spit he used to refer to his first wife Sylvia, a German woman said to have been a Nazi, as 'Saliva.' In some versions she is French.

There is much speculation as to writings he may have left behind, some suggest a slew of stories about the Glass family or a major series to rival Balzac's 'La Comedie Humaine.' Over at The Daily Beast they have something of a scoop from their pal Jay McInerney who said he heard (from “an ex-girlfriend”) that Salinger was mostly writing about health and nutrition. The shortest obituary was seen on Twitter, probably from a Cockney tweeter -'Rye Man is Brown Bread.'

When a major writer leaves the planet there is the usual rush on Ebay to capitalise. Within hours of his death being announced a signed typed letter had gone up as a Buy it Now at $2000. It was from Salinger to one "Madeline" in New York asking her to 'please stop sending requests for an interview.' Not a bad price and it sold within minutes to the fastest finger. Meanwhile someone wants a risible $36000 for an unprovenanced and distinctly dodgy plain signature on an envelope. It does not pass the 'blink' test. Another less greedy entrepreneur wants $2500 for a USPS delivery confirmation signature from 1997. A hurried and untypical signature but probably genuine.

This must be a wily autograph dealer trick - you send your famous person (say Pynchon, Dylan, Marquez) a parcel containing something of obvious value and request signature confirmation and make sure you get the original returned to you. With Salinger there are about a dozen signed typed letters for sale on various online malls from $5000 to $15000 and I suspect that many more will now come out ( he appears to have been a fairly voluminous correspondent). Holders of autograph material may have been afraid to sell because of JD's litigiousness, presumably this threat is gone or has diminished.

The Onion, a sort of US 'Private Eye', had a good report on the great man's demise:

Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger

CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. "He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers," said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don't have to look at them for four years. "There will never be another voice like his." Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it's just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything.

[to be continued with sober pondering of values, reflections on authenticity, and the mysterious genesis of Holden Caulfield's moniker... ]