Collectable annotated books

We’re talking here about the more distinctive outraged responses by anonymous writers or minor authors (identified elsewhere in the book) to an opinion or a fact. Or perhaps passages of creative writing on blank pages. Or drawings. Or anything else, apart obviously from phone numbers, addresses (although these can be intriguing), calculations, train and bus times, shopping lists, book titles and recipes for soups.

Such books might make a good collection and I suspect that book dealers who discover such annotations in their books secrete them away for future research. Or if they don’t they should do.

Perhaps we could start with creative writing. In pencil on the back endpaper of my first edition of Wyndham Lewis’s Men Without Art (1934) I found this intriguing snatch of fiction, perhaps the beginning of a projected short story, and probably written in the pub alluded to:

‘ A woman with short fair hair cut in a fringe straight across her forehead and round dark blue sleepy eyes. Forty, fortyish face and ugly pointed turned up nose and a smile sometimes sheepish & sly & sometimes giggly & childish. She has a small face of a girl in a close fitting hat and a light blue coat. She & her young man were lunching in a pub, obliged to sit at a table, when a tall man sat back staring at the ceiling & blowing smoke between a hole in his front teeth, eyes half closed, all ears open to anything they might say, eyes half closed.
She did not notice this or mind, but he hated it. He was part silenced. He ordered a drink for her—whisky & ginger ale. “ What I had last night “ ---this is an expedition in sin---giggled after she had drunk a bit & kept glancing at him . She is awed at the pub. He is jaded, bored by it. She looks disinterestedly at him… ‘

Will I ever discover who wrote this? Perhaps someone out there recognises the style…

Writing in books polarises opinion, but Heather Jackson, the academic who wrote the excellent Marginalia is not alone in feeling that writing in books which is witty and/or adds to the debate deserves to be preserved. If we should rightly condemn the early twentieth century librarian who dutifully rubbed out George Eliot’s many comments in pencil in her books, why should we reject the equally perceptive remarks that ‘disfigure‘ a book just because they are anonymous ? As for doctored library books, it is more than probable that the puritans of Islington Library who publically tut-tutted over Halliwell and Orton, had a private chuckle over the humour displayed by the ‘vandals’, and at a time when the Pop Art of Peter Blake et al was being appreciated, may even have admired their creativity.

Indeed, on the issue of Halliwell’s book vandalism, a few years ago I reported in Rare Book Review on the collage offered for sale at an auction in Cambridge in October 2005. The artwork, signed and dated 1966, and measuring 50.5 x 40.5 cm, comprised fragments of book and magazine illustrations that suggested a large demonic face. Doubtless psychoanalysts would have something to say about the future murderer’s state of mind at the time he made it. Surprisingly, bidders weren’t sufficiently impressed and the work remained unsold at £1,600 (est. £2,500 - £3,000).

As for scribbles, underlinings, question marks and exclamation marks--- good when the book is identifiably Iris Murdoch’s copy of Sartre or Blake’s copy of Reynolds’s Discourses on Art, or John Betjeman’s own Bartholomew maps that he used as Editor of the Shell Guides, which I viewed at auction, but tragically did not bid for; not so enviable when the question marks etc., in a battered paperback copy of Yeats’ Selected Poems were put there by some student wannabe novelist who ended up as a regional sales manager for Argos. [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. Above is David Foster Wallace's copy of Cormac McCarthy's 'Suttree' held at the Harry Ransom Library-- for which much thanks. Below is a book annotated by Charles Darwin.

Years back at an auction in the West Country I bought (with the legendary Roger Elliott) a big lot of books, some of which had come from Max Gate, the home of Thomas Hardy. In there were some early psychology text books annotated by Hardy. Roger sold them for us on the strength that Hardy's notes were all about the mental state of his first wife Emma Lavinia Gifford. I also had Graham Greene's copy of 'Children of the Sun' - a book about the Brideshead generation with many notes by GG. Seem to recall getting more that £500 over 20 years ago. Less dear was Handasyde Buchanan's copy of Sykes book on Evelyn Waugh with Handy's sloshed notes about Sykes in the margin, things like 'snivelling little shit' etc., For $30 in Santa Cruz I bought a book about Robert Heinlein by H.Bruce Franklin --Heinlein had annotated the book extensively with pencilled marginal linings, underlinings, questions and exclamation marks and a few notes. The clue was that the book was presented to him by Franklin 'with deep respect and admiration... and a few disagreements.' Sold a few weeks later after some research for $500...I could go on bragging, this a fascinating and profitable area of collecting.

Lousy condition / Cold climate

I have been trying to build a set of books by Nancy Mitford for a customer who wants to have them bound in leather. In these cases you require no jackets, the covers can be worn but the text must be clean. I have dismissed all the nice copies at silly prices and all the lousy copies at whatever price, although as usual some of these were pricier than the ones in exemplary condition. Some were so bad they reminded me of the Dada knife (lacks handle and blade). They lacked pages, spines, boards, some even had missing title pages - mentioned as an afterthought as if it was no big deal.

Inspired, motivated, energised and exasperated I started on a search for the worst condition book on the entire web. In 2007 there had been a legendary Webster's dictionary on Ebay that was basicaly a pile of ruined, frayed and crumbling paper -- it looked like, as Jimmy Webb would say -'Someone left a cake out in the rain...' It attracted no bids but was a fun item for a while. That was a yardstick. There are not that many truly appalling books on the web as they take a long time to describe and you cannot charge much for them. There are some eighteenth century and earlier books in laughably bad state often with huge loss and every indignity a book can suffer, presumably catalogued because of their antiquity. There is a type of customer who thinks old books should be a bit worn and distressed, even a few dealers. The above image is from a site where the customer bought the books to use for collage work and old and ruined books can have their uses as door stops or draught excluders etc.,

In my quest I did not have to go much further than the divine Nancy's Love in a Cold Climate (a book worth nearly a grand fine in fine jacket). A German dealer had a reasonably priced hardback first and I took his description through a translation machine (Babylon) only to find it was a staggeringly poor copy:

"... worn, dirty, stained, tanned, rubbed on the book spine, mint gold florins, edges and corners, provides a home for some very schiefgelesen, body is dirty, pages with a tan, slightly wavy, stained, notes on passports front, very relaxed in bond, body disintegrates, medium to rather bad condition..." ['Ganzleinen, abgegriffen, verschmutzt, fleckig, gebräunt, abgerieben, am Buchrücken Goldprägung, Kanten und Ecken bestossen, sehr schiefgelesen, Textkörper verschmutzt, Seiten gebräunt, leicht wellig, fleckig, Notizen auf Einbandinnenseite vorne, sehr locker in Bindung, Textkörper zerfällt, mittlerer bis eher schlechter Zustand, in Englisch".']

'Schief gelesen' actually means 'cocked' or 'askew' but at first I had thought the book was a home for some sort of Berlin based insect and that it might be hands down the worst condition book on the net! The Google translation isn't much happier:

"...worn, dirty, stained, browned, rubbed, the spine gilt tooling, edges and corners slightly worn, very wrong read the body of polluted, pages browned, slightly wavy, mottled, notes on inside cover page front, very loosein binding, the body decays, moderate to rather poor condition, in English..."

Keyword searches at online malls using words such as 'poor condition', 'missing',' worn', 'torn' reveal some seriously ravaged old books. I was rather taken with a very honest description of a dust jacket on a decent condition 1940s film annual at $20. The dealer prefaced his description thus- 'Words almost fail me on just how bad this dustwapper truly is...' but he goes on at length to describe its many faults ('very heavily rubbed, faded and marked...major tears and pieces missing...rubbing and chipping, with loss to all corners. The top of the spine is missing and chipping to the lower spine edge. The front top panel has a piece missing measuring 4.25 " X 1.25 ". The front fore edge has also a piece missing 3 " from the bottom edge. There is a 1 " torn piece to the spine area 3.5 " from the bottom edge. The back panel has 2 tears measuring 1.75 ", with associated creasing and there is a piece missing measuring 1.25 " X 0.75 ", Heavy rubbing along the rear fold over crease. Verso of the dustwrapper is stained, brown and quite marked. Remains of tape can be seen on both the top and bottom...)

My advice would be to chuck the jacket away; you could probably get $25 if you did not have it. Due to a sort of 'halo effect' its awfulness reduces the price to less than a copy that has no jacket and 20 minutes does not have to be wasted describing its many problems.

Some of the world’s best ( and most expensive ) printing errors

Ludicrous

‘ Sir Robert Peel and a party of fiends were engaged in shooting peasants at Drayton manor ‘. This shurely can’t be a genuine newspaper report.

Bray Colliery Disaster
‘The remains of the late John Payne, collier, were interred yesterday afternoon in the Bray Churchyard, in the presence of a large number of friends and spectators’.

Hmmm. Must remember to visit this colliery near Maidenhead. The provincial reporter, who had taken this report from a national newspaper, had evidently never heard of Mr Collier, the notorious Shakespeare forger.

In Charlotte Yonge’s Dynevor Terrace (1857 ) a lady is described as being ‘ without stretched arms ‘.

On page 389 of the Index to Edmund Blunden’s, Leigh Hunt (1930 ) Thornton Hunt becomes Thornton Heath. Perhaps the indexer lived in south London.

In the error- strewn Early Victorian Illustrated Books (2005) by John Buchanan-Brown, Puss in Boots, becomes Puss in Books, which could be a good name for a bookshop. Incidentally, this book was published by the British Library !

Presumptuous

In William Derham’s, Life of Ray ( 1760 ) a list of books read by the botanist in 1667 is printed from a letter to a certain Dr Lister. One of the books was about ‘great Rakes ‘ which was interpreted by Derham’s editor, George Scott, as having something to do with agricultural implements. Scott then extrapolated that these were ‘ now come into general use among farmers and are called drag rakes ‘. In reality the work referred to by Ray was concerned with the exploits of Mr Valentine Greatrakes, the infamous quack doctor.
Astonishingly, this blunder remained uncorrected in Lankester’s Memorials of John Ray (1846) and was only noticed by Rev Rich Hooper in N & Q seventh ser. iv 225.

I’d like to do a whole blog on literary show-offs (often third-rate academics) who GET IT ALL WRONG. But on second thoughts, it would take a whole book…

Illogical book titles

Old Lights for New Chancels ( from ‘ By the same author ‘ note in 2nd edition of Betjeman’s New Bats in Old Belfries (1945 ). It was the other way around, of course. The error was corrected later.

Dangerous and expensive

The French lawyer and brilliant amateur mathematician Franciscus Vieta was wealthy enough to finance the publication of his own pioneering treatises, but so meticulous was he that, being discontented with the misprints that had escaped his notice in his Canon Mathematicus (1579) he purchased all the copies he could meet with. Today, the book, like all his other works, has become extremely rare and sought after by modern mathematicians.

‘Pope Sixtus the Fifth’s Vulgate Bible of 1590 so swarmed with errors that paper had to be pasted over some of the erroneous passages, and no-one took seriously the bull prefixed to the first volume which excommunicated any printer who altered the text. A few months later, the Pope died and the College of Cardinals stopped any further sales, and also bought and destroyed as many copies as possible. Back in the mid nineteenth century a copy was sold in France for 1210 Francs. God knows how much one would fetch today.

In the ‘Wicked’ Bible of 1631 Thou shalt not commit adultery is rendered as Thou shall commit adultery. This was thought to be unique, but at least six, and possibly a few more, copies are now thought to have survived. One was bought for £25 in 1855, an imperfect copy was sold to the BM not long afterwards, a third was sold to the Bodleian by a Dr Badinel, a fourth is in the Euing Library, Glasgow, a fifth was discovered by Henry J Atkinson of Gunnersbury in 1883 and a sixth was snaffled up in Ireland in 1884. The Great (Bible) Site boasts of having the only copy for sale in the world at a wicked $89,500.

In a Bible of 1634 the first verse of Psalm 14 appears as ‘The fool hath said in his heart there is God ‘.
The authorities perhaps did not view this error as particularly dangerous, for there is no evidence that the printer was ever prosecuted. Copies still go for £1,000 or more, however.

You would think that the lessons regarding dangerous misprints would have been learnt by 1716, but no. In this year James Blow of Belfast published the first edition of the Bible to appear in Ireland . Unfortunately, in Isaiah ‘Sin no more’ appeared as ‘Sin on more’. No error was discovered until a number of copies had been issued and bound. The 8,000 or so sheets containing the mistake had to be cancelled and new ones printed. Few copies could have escaped capture, because I can’t find a single one for sale online. Perhaps Dr Ian Paisley has a copy.

Intentional errors

John Field, the famous Puritan printer, is said to have received £1500 from the Independents as a bribe to corrupt a text which might sanction their practise of lay ordination. Thus in Acts vi 3 ‘ye’ is changed to ‘we’ in several editions of his Bible.
The verse reads: ‘Wherefore, brethren, look ye among the ye seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom ye may appoint over this business’.

It is likely, however, that the great French satirist Rabelais intentionally swapped ame (soul) for asne ( the archaic spelling of donkey). For this he was investigated by the papal police for heresy, and only narrowly escaped conviction and death. He pleaded a printing error and got off. [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. I've been careful to eradicate printer's mishtakes! ((Except 'shurely' and 'mishtake' --witticisms courtesy of Hislop etc.,) Possibly not carefully enough for the Trussophiles who patrol the net looking for missing Oxford commas and split infinitives. We may well have failed and will fail better next time...

That misprinted Rabelais sounds like the kind of book that Boris Balkan would have commissioned Dean Corso to hunt down in Pérez-Reverte's 'The Club Dumas' (1993) memorably filmed by Polanski as 'The Ninth Gate' with J. Depp. Book scouts don't come any better looking than that...

Collecting technological predictions in literature 2

E-books were described by Jules Verne in Paris in the Twentieth Century, which he completed in 1864. Unfortunately, an editor rejected it as ‘ too fantastical ‘ and Verne locked it away in a drawer. In 1994 it was rediscovered in a safe by a descendant, who decided to publish it. The English translation appeared in 1996. In the same novel Verne predicted petrol-powered vehicles, pocket calculators and a ‘ worldwide telegraphic communications’ network. The subway system he described was hardly a prediction---London already had the world’s first in 1864.
“ Michel search for literature, but nothing but technology was available in bookstores “
Copies of the paperback are common enough at around $15.

Legendary science writer Dr Isaac Asimov described an e book in an article ‘The Fun we had’, which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February 1954.

“’Gee, said Tommy. ‘What a waste. When you’re through with the book you just throw it away…our television screen must have had a million books on it and it’s good for plenty more. I wouldn’t throw it away. ‘“

Copies of the magazine are probably quite common. You can pay a mere $7 for one on ABE, though one chancer demands $99 for his copy.

Ten years later SF writer Stanilaw Lem wrote about e-books in Return from the Stars (1961)

“ I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had been published for nearly half a century…The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory…all my purchase fitted into one pocket, though there must have been almost three hundred titles. “

Copies of the first English translation with jacket are surprisingly cheap at around $16. One copy is priced at a measly $5 on ABE.
[R.M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. The Verne predictions are almost freakish in their number and accuracy and Lem's bookshop prediction is slightly chilling to one who owns a bookstore. Thanks again Sophie at Money.co.uk and those who have emailed with suggestions.

Collecting technological predictions in literature 1

As we all know, Charles Babbage and Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, were pioneers of the earliest and crudest computer technology, but later writers on science went one better and seem to have predicted most of the developments in telecommunications and digital technology that we are familiar with today.

The personal computer and the Internet were accurately predicted by Murray Leinster ( writing as Will F Jenkins ) in his short story, A Logic named Joe ,in the March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

“ You know the Logic’s set up. You got a Logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get...You punch “Sally Hancock’s Phone” an’ the screen blinks an’splutters an’ you’re hooked up with the Logic in her house an’ if someone answers you got a vision-phone connection.”

“The Tank is a big building full of all the facts in creation an’ all the recorded telecasts that ever were made –an’ its hooked in with all the other Tanks all over the country—an’ everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an’ you get it.”

There are only 3 copies of the March issue of Astounding Science Fiction on ABE at present. Considering how significant Leinster’s story is, £2.95 seems a very small price for the copy in Wiltshire, but the other two aren’t dear either.


Laptops were envisaged by James P Hogan in his novel Inherit the Stars 1977)

“ Rob Gray …sat with an open briefcase resting on his knees. He studied the information being displayed on the screen built into its lid…Gray addressed the (microphone) grille located next to the tiny lens just above the screen .”

Copies of the novel are not expensive. At present there are two on ABE, one of which is described as having ‘ a clean, solid, unmarked and virginal spine and pages untouched by a reader’s hands ‘. It’s yours for $17.95.



The technology behind the Internet and especially Wikipedia were predicted by visionary engineer Vannevar Bush in his article ‘ As We May Think ‘, which appeared in Atlantic Monthly July 1945.

“ Wholly new forms of encyclopaedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.”

Because of the demand from geeks this item is expensive. A single copy of this particular issue is currently on ABE at a slightly risible $1500, whereas a half-yearly bound volume containing it can be had for $350 or $500.


Ipad like devices were described by Stanislaw Lem in The Futurological Congress (1974)

“Dinner with Aileen again, at the ‘Bronx’. A sweet girl, always has something to say, not like those women on the scuttle who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation. “

Early editions are quite numerous on ABE. You can secure a good copy of the first American edition (1974) for $29 or less.

Strange genius Nikola Tesla wrote about an early Blackberry-like device in the October 1909 issue of Popular Mechanics.

“ An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song…it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London, or elsewhere “.

This American magazine was at the cutting edge of consumer gadgetry and there is a big demand for early copies. At present there are no very early issues on ABE, so you might have to settle for a reprint published by Hearst Magazines, who allow you to browse pages online. Alternatively, you could buy a large collection of issues, including the one for October 1909, from a guy in Canada who wants a very reasonable $200 for the lot.

Sci-fi master Robert Heinlein described a Blackberry-like device in his novel Assignment in Eternity (1953).

“’ How come’, he asked as he came abreast, ‘they had to search for you ? ‘. ‘ Left my pocket phone in my other suit ‘, Coburn returned briefly.‘ Did it on purpose. I wanted a little peace and quiet. No luck.’”

Paperback firsts of Assignment to Eternity are legion on ABE. Many cost only 1$.

I phone technology was envisaged by H. G. Wells in When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) and The Sleeper Wakes (1910).

“He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what they might be and stepped back to regard it. On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figure that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube.”

Expect to pay little more than £20 for the revised 1910 edition on ABE, but the 1899 Sleeper, with its red boards, comes in at a lot more. Pay more for copies with wrappers.

In his predictions for 1983 David Hadju envisaged i-phones in a late 1982 issue of the now defunct Video Review magazine.

“Video-walkie-talkies …with micro-processors and the first flat screen display picture tubes. There’s nothing preventing the development of personal two-way TV transmitter receivers –except perhaps the FCC “.

Copies of the magazine are common enough .

Ipads are described by Arthur C. Clarke in the cult 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968)
“ When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug in his foolscap-size newspad into the ship’s information circuit an scan the latest reports from Earth . One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers.”

Signed copies of 2001 are sought after and go for $3,000 or more; unsigned ones for about $1,700.The cheapest are the trade edition firsts in paperback, which can be had for a few dollars. [R.M. Healey]

To be continued...Many thanks Robin and many, many thanks Sophie at Money.co.uk for the painstaking research behind this posting. Sophie also points out a few predictions that didn't go so well:

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp in 1977.

I am tempted to buy one of the March 1946 issues of 'Astounding Science Fiction' with Murray Leinster's internet prediction - the only decent one is £20 and it's the Brit issue... On the subject of Tesla the pugnacious proprietor of a used bookshop in Portsmouth, NH, USA has a signed 1894 copy of his Inventions, Researches & Writings of Nikola Tesla in 'prominently' signed by him on the half-title page but in worn condition. Priced with crazed oligarchs firmly in mind, the chap wants $1 million. It has been there many moons. I predict this will sell at this price before the middle of the 22nd century. To put it in perspective 5 years back a canny dealer bought a 4 page signed letter from Tesla to George Sylvester Viereck praising him for his poetry and even enclosing some of his own. He paid $1140 at auction (Spink Shreve NY). At the same auction Tesla's signature on a card with original holograph envelope made $425.

Early books on the Cinema 2

Legendary dealer in the performing arts, Elliott Katt, reserved the highest praise for the magnum opus of yet another Thomas Edison co-worker, Terry Ramsaye (1885 – 1954). His two volume A Million and One Nights (1926), which tells the fascinating story of the moving image from Muybridge onwards, and benefits from his having interviewed many of the movie pioneers, ranks high in the list of ‘One Hundred Books on Hollywood and the Movies’. However, impoverished cineastes should look out for a cheap reprint, rather than the edition limited to 327 or the trade edition. All copies of the former are signed by the author and Thomas Edison, while some copies of the latter also bear the signatures of the two men. Hence the fancy prices. If signatures do nothing for you, $600 will buy a bog standard copy on ABE, or you may get away with shelling out a lot less for a battered or library copy in some US used bookstore. However, this is less likely to happen in the UK or Europe, which explains why a mom and mop operation called Chloe and Denis working out of Paris want $2639 for an apparently unsigned copy. Sacre bleu! If you’re really into Edison and but are misguided enough not to care whether you get only one volume of the two, then another dealer can offer a typed and signed testimony by the great man with volume 1 of the limited edition for a trifling $5625. A much, much cheaper on-the-spot history of the movies is the less scholarly Behind the Motion Picture Scene ( 1919) by Austin C. Lescaboura, which for its 300 illustrations alone must be a bargain at $60 (ABE).

History is OK, but if it’s stars and gossip you want you might try and look out for a copy of Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story, being the faithful recital of a romantic career (1916). I wish you the best of luck, because when the British star discovered that a female journalist had turned her interview with him into this lurid unauthorised ‘ confession ‘, he demanded that all copies be ‘ suppressed ‘. According to Katt only six copies are known to have survived the pulping carried out by publisher Bobbs-Merrill. Consequently, this is probably the rarest movie book in the world. A rather less scarce Chaplin title is My Trip Abroad (1921). Some copies are signed by Chaplin and include a sketch of his shoes. Such copies, even without the jacket can retail for $750 or more, but ex-library copies in poor condition are presently on ABE for under £50.



Two other curiosities of the early years are also worth seeking out. Before Anita Loos wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes she put together Breaking into the Movies (1921) with her husband, John Emerson. Copies of this sleeper are hard to find anywhere, but in ABE a certain well know West End dealer has a nice jacketed one at a cool $1237. At about the same time Darryl F Zanuck, who later achieved fame as a movie producer, was writing film plots and short stories. His collection Habit which appeared in 1923, when he was just 21, was described in rather gnomic terms by its blurb writer as a ‘thrilling yarn that starts where fiction ends and life begins’. Was this about cocaine addiction (some things never change ) ? I don’t know, but I could find out easily for a mere $9 (ABE), or, if I wanted a jacketed copy, for a reasonable $75. There is also a copy for $1,000 online. Of early autobiographies by actors, there are doubtless hundreds, but some stand out. Basil Rathbone’s In and Out of Character (1962) comes up at around $90, but a signed presentation copy is presently on ABE at £319. According to Katt, Rathbone always signed copies when he attended Sherlock Holmes conventions.
[R. M. Healey]


Many thanks Robin. Must look out for the suppressed Chaplin book! The signed limited edition of the Terry Ramsaye book seems to attract chancers. It has never made more than $2000 in auction (Will Hays copy at Hindman, Mar 24, 2009) and a few years back made $475 but one dealer want $5500+ for it. A copy appeared recently as a B.I.N. on Ebay at $3000, then $2500 and finally found a buyer at $1000. These days it pays to wait...

Another Chaplin sleeper is the surrealist tract sometimes found in the September 1927 issue of 'Transition.' It is said to be by Aragon and is called 'Hands off Love.' It was written in repsonse to attacks on Chaplin for his private life in the current gutter press. It contains some marvellous OTT ranting '...thank the man who, on the vast screen of the West, over there on the horizon where the suns are setting one by one, today projects your shadows, great human truths, perhaps unique moral truths, which are worth more than all the Earth.' Right on Louis. Value? Surely a wad of euros?

Beefheart as Vorticist ?

The enthusiasm which has greeted the Vorticist exhibition currently at the Tate may be another sign that Wyndham Lewis is at last receiving the recognition he riches deserves as an artist and visionary. But is seems that the rebel and maverick in Lewis has always attracted admirers, particularly in the world of rock music. Brian Ferry is known to collect Lewis firsts and artwork, while the much wealthier David Bowie owns a number of paintings. Mark E Smith is another great fan and collector, as is Holly Johnson, late of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, whose solo album Blast, mimics the graphics of Lewis’s magazine.

According to art critic David Stoker, writing in a forthcoming issue of cult magazine The Lewisletter (available on ABE ) the recently deceased ( he died in December 2010) Don Van Vliet, better known as gravel-voiced oddball musician Captain Beefheart, was also an admirer. Although he boasted of never having been to school, never having read a book and being self-taught in art, the truth is a little more complex. The gallant Captain certainly had some sort of education, however sporadic, and the Muhammad Ali biography, Sting Like a Bee was his favourite book. He also attended art school, albeit for a short while. What he certainly didn’t have were music lessons---which may explain why his music, though memorably inventive and ground-breaking, can be difficult to like. And, though he was no formal collector of books by Lewis, he was a great fan of many Lewis books, especially Snooty Baronet ,which his manager Gary Lucas, himself an avid collector of Lewis’s art and first editions, read passages from while on the road. It comes as no surprise that Beefheart, whose work is shot through with wit and satire, took to Lewis immediately. Stoker argues a case for seeing the musician himself as a latter-day Lewis, in character and originality; and certainly if Lewis’s fiction can be seen in terms of visual satire, Beefheart’s music has been described by some as sculptural in quality---not surprisingly, as Van Vliet began his art career as a sculptor. Both were artists, Stoker argues, who saw beyond the limits of their particular art.

This music/art analogy might help bring people to the work of both men. Interestingly, back in October 1956, at the dawn of Rock, Lewis wrote a piece of social commentary on Bill Haley and the Comets for the young Henry Kissinger’s magazine Confluence. The piece was incoherent and wasn’t published. It would seem that the ageing and blind former Vorticist believed the band were black! Today Vorticism is becoming cool among young art lovers—and indeed young art collectors and book collectors. While Lewis’s prose works, with an aesthetic that is essentially cerebral and non-empathetic, might remain ‘difficult‘ to non-artists of any age—the art movement has a more direct appeal. And it’s the early Lewis stuff that’s being avidly collected today. Such is the demand that prices of the notoriously scarce Blast (1914, 1915), which was produced by a small printer in a back street of Harlesden, are at rock-star prices. Even ‘poor ‘copies ( detached covers and much rubbing )of both issues are on ABE for $4,500, and two in good condition, complete with fancy Sangorski and Sutcliffe box, is priced at £5,500. The Tyro (1922 ), though more common, ranges from $100 - $200, although my copy of this issue was rescued not long ago from a junk shop for £5. Copies of the three issue Enemy (1927 – 29), with their Vorticist-influenced covers, range from $60 - $150 ( issue 1 being the rare one ) and the striking jackets of Lewis’s masterpiece, The Apes of God, are a big selling point for what can be a big heavy lump of a book.

And with the rise in popularity of Vorticism can we at last expect the prices of two anti-Lewis pamphlets to rise in price too? On the occasion of a Lewis retrospective at the Tate in 1956 prickly ex-Vorticist William Roberts was so riled that Lewis had described Vorticism in the catalogue as ‘what I said or did at a particular time ‘ that he paid the excellent Favil Press to print two pamphlets,
the first of which violently repudiated Lewis’s claims. The Resurrection of Vorticism and the Apotheosis of Wyndham Lewis (1956) is cheap enough at around £16, while Some Early Abstract and Cubist Work, 1913 – 1920 (1957) is a little pricier at about £30. Despite their comparative rarity these have never been really appreciated. Perhaps they will be now!
[R. M. Healey. ]

Many thanks Robin --must get along to the Vorticist exhibition. Have always admired the movement -- when the shop was in Hammersmith in the late 1970s I was vaguely involved with a local bunch of malcontents loosely known as the Neo-Vorticists who produced the fanzine 'Dat Sun' which blasted and blessed current London figures such as Malcolm McLaren, Emperor Rosko and Monty Modlyn. Now rare! Lewis is of course a difficult read and I was advised to start with 'Tarr'. A good choice, I seem to recall there is a character in there who gives up laughing...The Chatto 'Phoenix Library' series 1928 revised edition is the one you want and it can be had for a tenner. Lewis said of it --" I have throughout finished what was rough and given the narrative everywhere a greater precision. A few scenes have been expanded and some material added." The 1918 Egoist edition can cost £2000 in a jacket.

The Joy of Dullness 2

The second and possibly the final part. Sadly some of these are not as dull as could be hoped, and I feel bad about that. However some are just plain odd or at least intriguing. A few are from the Summers collection and two (the plane and the office ones) are from the monumental Awful Library Books site, which has 100s of examples, some mind alteringly dull and bland.




Something that has briefly crossed my mind on long haul flights in moments of near desperation.



Written in 1993. Dullish title but the author was a child prodigy.



The kind of book that makes me glad I don't work in an office. The workers at the keyboard are a bizarre, slightly frightening image.



Very dull but probably quite saleable. The dental mason on the left looks like the kind of guy who prefers to work without anaesthetics.



Odd title-- basically it refers to legal cases in a 'nutshell.' Blurb says 'they include a number of features such as boxed "think points" to make them easy to use and retain the information. Nutcases are an essential revision aid...' Probably not P.C. anymore.



About 1914. Beware of the flying piano.



Written in pidgin English and coming out of Southern Africa in the early 1950s. Hints include 'moving as cleverly as a monkey' when you see a nice girl, speaking like a 'honey-tongued orator' (or like a nightingale). Girls will pretend indifference 'like a traffic police on duty..' Early in the genre of books on how to pick up girls and now somewhat superseded.



No laughing matter here. V sign from Churchill, Tartan from Harrods.



Handbook used by the British aristocracy.




The book that launched Subway.



Potential bestseller.




Dull, sad with some bathos and pathos.




Part of a small body of books on potatoes and possibly not as dull as it looks.

Miniature Books

Metro recently had a picture of a German standing proudly in front of his enormous collection of miniature books. This got me thinking as to whether miniature books were still being collected in the UK as they once were. The market, apparently, has always been driven by fanatical collectors, and in the States forty or more years ago collectors like Arthur Houghton had the funds to dominate the market. With the death of their owners many collections ended up in large libraries ( like the Lilly ), which meant that the best miniature books were taken out of circulation. There are still collectors around--- and indeed there is a society devoted to the field--but miniature books have become a bit un-cool. They are rarely seen at auction and the number of specialist dealers in the UK has dwindled to a handful. Maybe the trend is growing on the continent--- and it is good to see that someone with modest means in Germany can assemble such a large collection. But is there any point in collecting books whose size is often their most noteworthy feature, and many of which cannot be read without a magnifying glass---or, in two particular cases—a microscope?

One man who would have answered yes was the late Louis Bondy, who operated from a shop near the British Museum, where he also dealt in erotica. I recall paying a couple of visits back in the seventies and I remember the place being more especially musty and Dickensian than most second hand shops book shops of that period. Bondy seems to have advertised throughout the nineteen fifties to the eighties, and in 1981 published a book on the subject, which is now a collector’s item itself.



Apparently, the criteria is that a miniature book must be no more than 3 inches tall, which to me is hardly miniature. Most collectors would spurn an otherwise dull book that commanded a premium because it was that unremarkable height, or even slightly smaller. So when there are so many much smaller books around on ABE –although most seem to be boring Victorian or later bibles commanding prices of around $20--I would suggest that unless you’ve got a thing about bibles, you would do well to seek out books of at least 1 – 1 ½ inches high that are interesting in themselves. But don’t expect anything really small to come onto the market. Something like Chekhov’s Chameleon, which at 0.9mm square (about the size of a grain of salt), was, until very recently, the world’s smallest book, until it was trumped by a ‘ book ‘ that can only be read by an scanning electron microscope, are almost always gimmicky. And I suspect that until recently craft technology was unable to come up with anything smaller that a cm high.

The most collectable miniature books remain those which fall into the miniature category because they were designed to fit into small pockets. Many were published for students or children and were cheap because of their size. According to one dealer I interviewed, Galileo’s Letter to Christina di Lorena , originally published in 1636, but miniaturised in Padua in 1897, was once the world’s smallest book, and as such is particularly sought after. ‘Thumb’ bibles and tiny editions of devotional tracts and classical texts, most of which seem to have been published in the seventeenth century, do fetch big money. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the golden era for children’s books, some attractive miniature books were published by the Dartons. One that stands out is The Miniature Historic Library in 8 volumes, illustrated by 383 elegant engravings from designs by Alfred Mills, which appeared around 1812. This dinky set of volumes—each 6.2 x 8.5 cm-- was originally sold in its own pine box lined with pink paper, and had shelves and a sliding front. However, nowadays only single volumes seem to come up for sale, but these are pricey. Recently the volume on birds made £700 in the UK, while the less attractive one on Roman History is currently on offer at £87. [R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. Collecting miniature books may, as you suggest, be slightly out of favour; there have been very few requests for them at fairs or in the shop. The trend seems to be the other way-- towards gigantic, heavy books. One of the attractions of miniatures is that you can keep a sizeable collection in a shoe box and if you have to move or leave town in a hurry they are eminently portable.

The Joy of Dullness 1

Of late I have been assembling a collection of dull, curious or odd book covers. I wasn't really getting anywhere until I hit the collection of fellow Anglian dealer Robin Summers , a man with a whim of iron and one of the major contributor's to Brian Lake's magisterial Bizarre Books. So here they are, the scholarly ones are actually of some value and one even sold while I was putting this together, so does not appear -- a book on the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure entitled Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory. With the paperback selling at £50 the joke became too costly to hold on to. The collection is devoted to dullness mixed with the curious and the odd which includes the oddly dull and the curiously odd. Here goes:




A bundle of laughs. The puff reads ' By contrasting Pound's political values with those of Stein and Zukofsky, this study argues that these three different writers share a complex set of attitudes that are grounded in a collective social fantasy corresponding to the rise of mass consumption and the emergence of corporate social forms.' Some jokers want £100 for this although the committed shopper can find it for £10.



A little light reading.



Part of a small but select number of works on the brassiere. Not dull, but curious (in the old biblio sense.)
Good Housekeeping's family doctor has the answers.




Yes but do you have anything on extinct horse furniture in the Brussels area?





Useful book. Useful name.




Anything on consonants in the late Neo-Babylonian era?



I need this one badly. Actually an online search revels no copies - so £899?



One man's quest.




Someone had to write it.





Slow down and learn the language.

[More to come!]

Book descriptions -- the bland, the bad and the ugly

Checking prices on the net I often see strange and misleading book descriptions. I was alerted by Angus, a Bookride follower, to this fine example. It is one of those catchall descriptions that the cataloguer brings up with a programme like Typeit4me or cuts and pastes from a palette of such phrases. In this example the seller uses the exact phrase for over 12000 book descriptions - "Remains particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and strong". It is not a bad phrase as they go, although 'remains' is an offputting word as it suggests the book is not in the best shape. This is slightly re-inforced by the word 'surprisingly' as if the cataloguer himself is surprised the book has survived at all. The whole thing has that upbeat, genteel, wheedling tone that is prevalent online. Sometimes this leads on to entreaties such as this:

" Excellent reading on the subject. A good book to enjoy and keep on hand for yourself, or would make a GREAT GIFT for the fan / reader in your life. Reading is one of the great pleasures in life."

One guy has "Seems like an interesting title!" in all his descriptions, however dull the book.

Sometimes such entreaties are aligned with somewhat lousy descriptions:

"Hard Cover. No Covers. Absorbent Brown Spine With Two Light Brown Ovals With Title Inside Of Them In Light And Dark Brown Letters, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Shelf, Edge And Corner Ware, Some Edge Tearing And Chipping. Hard Cover Cover BooK: Fine, 338 Numbered Pages, That Were Lightly Read, And Are Clean And Tight To The Spine, Slight Shelf, Corner And Edge Ware. This Expensive BooK, Is Hard To Find, Will Make An Excellent Addition To Your Own Personal Library Collection, Or As A Gift. "

I realise 'fine' can encompass very slight handling wear and is surpassed by 'like new' and even the slightly dubious 'mint' but it cannot be associated with tears and chips! Also what in hell is an 'absorbent spine!'


Capitalised descriptions (shouting) are often a sign of a less than experienced bookseller ('UNREAD AND AS NEW BOOK WITH MISSING TITLE PAGE - COVER WITH LIGHT DAMAGE - COMPLETELY UNREAD - EXCELLENT CONDITION - READ ONCE CAREFULLY.') A missing title page, often mentioned as if it is nothing, is to my mind an almost fatal flaw...also while we are on the subject an ex library book can never be fine.

The subject is endless and there is an excellent 5000+ thread at the ABE forum collecting and discussing naff descriptions, it is called 'Disgusting - Must we have this?' Internecine warfare sometimes breaks out when a seller spots his description and resolutely defends it, but it has some real gems. Likewise John Baxter collected some truly awful Ebay descriptions at the back of his Pound of Paper. My favourite are descriptions in what I call the Alain Robbe Grillet style. The great nouveau roman writer can spend 2 pages describing a man's face in such relentless detail that at the end of it you have no idea what the chap actually looks like.

You have web descriptions where every line begins "this book..." often rhapsodising about the sharpness of the corners and others where the greatness of the condition is emphasised by negation (' no fraying, no tears, no marks or soiling, no chips, no pieces missing, no wrinkles or creases...) but the real Robbe- Grillet person gets into serious details and minutiae. On a $100 Franklin Mint bound in their trademark spam leather a seller notes -'gilt edges which when held to harsh light at an oblique angle there might be seen a few tiny lines or striations, perhaps not visible in ordinary light, and deemed very minor...' Pyjama Bob at Chapel Books just down the road in Suffolk is a master of the ultra precise description, here is a fairly restrained description of a £60 Penguin.

"Slight browning to pages, contents otherwise clean and unmarked. A little faint foxing or soiling to covers and spine rather browned. Joints show a little rubbing and small (5mm) split to base of upper joint, but covers are firm. Faint creasing to corners and a few light indentations show up when they catch the light..."

I am reminded of the late and much missed Peter Joliffe -- he used to say he would never describe a book as fine, there was always some imperfection to note, however slight... [To be continued]

Musings on the market for autographed letters...

Apparently autograph collecting as a hobby goes back as far as the 1780s, and the sheer number of letters that have survived from this date and slightly earlier—compared with the small number dating up to this period would suggest as much.
However, most letters in the catalogues of modern manuscript dealers seem to date from around 1840 onwards —which suggests that the hobby must have begun to really take off soon after this date. It is surely silly to argue that MPs, public officials, men of letters, churchmen, scientists, artists etc wrote fewer letters from, say, the mid 17th century to the mid eighteenth century and many more from the accession of Queen Victoria. People have always had to keep in touch. In fact, it could be argued that letter writers should have been more prolific in earlier times for the simple fact that before the age of the telegraph, the telephone, the train and the fast coach, there were no alternatives to the letter.

Of course, the arrival of the Penny Post in 1840 did make the sending of letters cheaper and more convenient—but this doesn’t really explain why so many letters have survived from this date. After all, with more letters around there were more to throw away. The only explanation as I see it is that after a certain date more people began to keep letters---perhaps due to the cult of the celebrity, which began to flourish following the accession of the young and glamorous Queen Victoria, and grew stronger as the century wore on , thus strengthening the market for letters. I have seen a number of albums of letters and cut-out signatures (sometimes assembled with a collection of crests) which appear to date from the mid nineteenth century.

Certainly there were autograph dealers in the mid Victorian period (I have an envelope bearing the name and address of one of them) and there are letters replying to requests from autograph hunters from Victorian celebs (who were often soldiers, politicians and other public figures). Occasionally, a celeb might donate a letter or an autograph received from a more famous celeb (I have a letter indicating that the signature of Tolstoy, which the sender had asked for, had been enclosed), which for some reason the donor no longer wished to keep. There are perhaps grounds for supposing that , say , someone like a cabinet minister or a general might see such autograph hunting by the hoi polloi as a bit infra dig , but worth encouraging for its positive public relations value. A more recent example for me was a letter from Hugh Gaitskell to my uncle, Denis Healey, willingly given to me by Denis when I was aged 11, which was claimed back almost immediately after Gaitskell suddenly died. It would be nice to know if something similar occurred in the Victorian or Edwardian period.

Perhaps many of the letters that come onto the market today are letters from others to the celeb that have been donated by celebs to collectors. Otherwise, unless there were many dealers in autographs and sales of autographs, how did these letters, many of which bear on matters often weightier than a request by a collector for a signature, come onto the market? Or it is equally possible that the ‘I can’t come to tea ‘letters (as I call them) were kept by admirers who knew the celeb professionally or personally, but at a low level. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that important letters would have been surrendered to a collector by the celeb recipient. It is more likely that such letters would have been kept by the recipient and to have remained alongside other important papers at his or her death-- to be sold off to book and autograph dealers, or sent to auction.
[R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin
I once had a 'clipped' signature of John Keats in an old album -it read something like 'yours faithfully John Keats' and I wondered about the letter that it had been clipped from-- was it to Mary Shelley suggesting a fantastical character or to Byron swapping anecdotes of conquests? Or merely another 'can't come to tea' note...? Certainly it was a bloody sight more valuable than the clipping. Damn these early autograph hounds...

By the way the letter above is a Keats forgery by Major George de Luna Byron (ca. 1810-1882). He claimed to be the natural son of the Lord George Gordon Byron by a Spanish countess and was quite successful at penning and selling off fake letters of Byron, Shelley and Keats in the mid-nineteenth century. His forgeries are collected but they are worth a fraction of the real thing and cause much disappointment when unmasked. Below is a genuine Bruce Lee letter offering good advice to a young girl fan.

Early Books on Television: 1926 – 1939

British techies will boast that the origins of television can be traced to a room above a shop in Hastings ( blue plaque ) where John Logie Baird constructed the first TV receiver—generating moving images on a mechanical principle. Americans, however, will argue that their man, a certain C. Francis Jenkins, who was also involved in cinema technology , was doing almost the same thing six months earlier in1923. Unfortunately, neither of these pioneers can be said to have invented the television that we tune into today. Most of the credit for that probably belongs to Philo Farnsworth, the farmer’s son from Utah who in 1927, aged 21, produced the first electronic image. So, whatever way you look at it, the Americans invented television, just as they invented rock music.

Most of the collected works on early TV appeared before 1930. The first book on TV alone was Alfred Dinsdale’s well-known Television, or seeing by wireless (1926). For such a seemingly rare book (‘a rather rare book’, according to one dealer, who wants a toppish £2,490 for his copy) there are quite a few on ABE, ranging in price from a reasonable £350. Personally, I don’t see much point in paying an extra £2,000 or so for an especially good copy of what is essentially a superannuated pamphlet.

The second significant work, which appeared a year later is Television for the Home by Ronald Tiltman, whose frontispiece show the author being televised by John Logie Baird himself. Recently , there was a very nice jacketed copy of this on ABE for a sensible price. For its technical content alone, this seems a rather better investment than Dinsdale. However, if you hanker for a Dinsdale and can’t afford his Seeing by Wireless you could target a copy or a run ( if you can find one ) of his genuinely rare Television Journal (6d a month), whose July 1929 cover rather hopefully looks ahead to a time when the family might gather around the box of light on a winter evening--an extraordinary image for 1929, when radio was still in its infancy and TV broadcasting was several years away.




The more common Book of Practical Television (1935) by G. V. Dowding, an electrical engineer, is a pretty comprehensive technical exposition of 320 pages and many fascinating illustrations, which compares the mechanical and electronic versions of television and places them in a historical context. It even suggests how an enthusiast might build his own receiver. I paid a mere £1.50 for my copy a few years ago, but you’d be lucky to secure one for under £30 now. For historians of TV, issues of the Radio Times from c 1934 are valuable sources of information and can still be had for a few pounds. Copies of The Listener from 1936 to 1939 are equally useful and much cheaper still. Of the latter, look for transcripts of the live discussions by such pre-war TV pioneers as John Piper and Geoffrey Grigson--- and search out the wonderful set-to in 1939 between Grigson and Wyndham Lewis speaking on the side of modern art and the anti-modern defenders of the establishment. Pre-1939 copies of the BBC Yearbook, are also worth seeking out for about £10 each, though I’ve can’t recall ever finding a copy.
Incidentally, in 1936 appeared one of the earliest mentions of television in a literary work. In ‘ And if this mountain cease' from Poems (1936) by the poet and critic Michael Roberts we find:

‘ And if this mountain cease
If the rock-crystal breaks, and darkness comes
if the mind’s television ceases
if no one answers…. ‘

Still earlier mentions of television in literature are welcome via the comment box.
[R. M. Healey]

Many thanks Robin. Early mentions of TV? A bit late but quite valuable is the literary magazine edited by Lawrence Durrell 'International Post' (1939) -- it had a TV critic and was full of promise but went to just one highly elusive issue. Value? Many hundreds of pounds, even though Durrell has become a little slow...

The Dinsdale, as you say, is not especially scarce. The problem with the book is it has several high auction records, in 1996 a jacketed but worn copy made $4800 and in 2008 the 'Richard Green copy' in rubbed d/j with tape repair on back panel made $16250. So some hapless collector had to pay nearly £10000 to carry the little book out of Christies New York. Sadly Richard Green was not the TV Robin Hood but an important collector of science books. It falls into the category of a book that is hard to buy (due to high levels of expectation) and hard to sell (because it is quite common.) In this same category are early BBC yearbooks which people want a lot for but are hard to sell for much over £20, even those with decoish covers. Last word on the unelusive Dinsdale. John Logie Baird's copy turned up last year. It made £1200 at Bonhams (1 plate shaved, some gatherings loose.) This may be a book that is not firmly in the ascendant, although a fine copy in jacket is offered at $9500 at History of Science.com citing the Green copy. Condition, as so often, trumps association...

Wiliam Waldorf Astor at the Villa Sirena

I found this art noveau style bookplate in all five vols of a 1900 English edition of Humboldt's Cosmos bound in leather (by Root and Son.) This bookplate set me off on a quest for where Villa Sirena might have been. My search took me to the siren haunted town of Sorrento on the Bay of Naples where Astor (then the richest man in the world) had bought several villas. None appeared to be now called Villa Sirena but this seems to be it; I quote from an amalgam of holiday brochures:

"...in the first century A.D. Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Emperor Augustus built aa fine villa in the same place where is now Villa Tritone (later Villa Sirena / Villa Dei Leoni) and Ovid was one of its first eminent visitors.
On this site in the thirteenth century a convent was built for nuns belonging to an enclosed order. At the end of the sixteenth century, after a destructive invasion by the Saracens, the place was rebuilt by Dominican priests, who started to cultivate the garden, bringing the first citrus fruits trees from the Middle East. At that time, in 1577, Torquato Tasso, Sorrento's foremost poet, author of "Jerusalem Delivered", shared his torments with the prior of the monastery.
In 1888 Count Labonia, a distinguished collector of antiquities and friend of Heinrich Schliemann, the excavator of Troy, bought the site and began to build the present house which he called "Aux Roches Grises", recalling the grey rocks on which the house stands. At the beginning of the twentieth century, U.S. Ambassador William Waldorf Astor bought the house and, where the convent once stood, he designed the garden, behind the villa and on either side, encircled by walls and balustrades, to protect this private green oasis of palms, oranges, cycas, cypresses, eucalyptus, pines. He bought the Villa (then called Villa Syrene) in 1906 and made it a repository for his vast and ever-growing collection of classical, medieval, and Renaissance statuary. The convent was destroyed and a wall along the property’s seaward side was raised, where various openings were made and decorated with medieval ruins and Greek-style temples. Secret paths and allées run through the lush vegetation revealing statues, urns, fountains and glimpses of sea and sky through the windows cut out in the high wall along the seaward side..."

So a distinguished place with 2000 years of history, serious literary connections and probably a fabulous library of which my vols (for which I paid £50 and hope to double) formed a tiny part. Through some route more strange and circuitous than the 'secret paths' of this villa the book ended up at Bradfield College Science Library and proudly bears their bold blue stamps. These lower the price but are fairly neatly applied. It is interesting to note from 1943 – 1945, the property hosted Benedetto Croce, turning it into a political crossroads for the rising Republic of Italy. The official signing of the declaration for the first Italian government after the war was signed in the room which is now used as a study. The place can be rented (8 bedrooms, sleeps 16 -- towels and beach towels changed every 3 days and bed linens once a week.) I doubt it is cheap.

Deeper research shows that William Waldorf Astor wrote a short story for the Pall Mall Gazette (which he had bought for £50,0000) of July 1906 called The Last of the Tenth Legion. It is of a decidedly occult/ theosophical bent beginning thus 'It was to his Villa Sirena, at Sorrento, amid its interbraiding shine and dark, that Vaini summoned me, in May 1895, for a psychical experiment...'Although it starts like Borges it does not quite have the great man's touch. In 1900 he published A Pharaoh's Daughter and Other Stories -- a Bleiler title, being a collection of fantasy stories including tales of terror and the supernatural. A fine copy can sell for £100. Oddly enough his cousin John Jacob Astor is also responsible for a Bleiler title A Journey in Other Worlds (Appleton NY 1894) describing the earth in the year 2000, along with journeys to Jupiter and Saturn. Another £100 book. One critic called it "..a pioneering work that is of considerable literary, historical, and social interest." In Villa Sirena's library one wonders if there was a large section of fantasy, vampire novels, interplanetary travel and occult detective fiction, possibly now sitting unclaimed in a Neapolitan warehouse or a storage room at Bradfield Science College...