Books

A friend has just emailed me to say that a 1983 edition of the Antiques Price Guide is on sale from a French dealer for the equivalent of of $78 (€55)! At this rate we'll be featuring our own books in the Collectables Price Guide!

From the survey on the home page of the web site I see that many of you are collectors of books and ephemera. Well yesterday there was a treat for all such collectors when many items of Marcel Proust, including his letters, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s Paris auction. There were eighteen Proust lots, including letters and telegrams to his housekeeper in their 173-item auction that fetched a combined €1.58 million sale.

Among Proust’s correspondence with his housekeeper was a seven-line, handwritten poem in which he described his servant as “tall, slender, beautiful,” it fetched €17,500; well exceeding a presale valuation. A coffee- stained note to her, written a few hours before he died in 1922 fetched €21,150 against an €8,000-euro estimate.

Other items in the sale included a book of poems by Stephane Mallarme illustrated by Henri Matisse – it fetched €90,750. A letter from Emile Zola reached €12,500 and a drawing by Victor Hugo reached €31,950. According to Anne Heilbronn, head of Sotheby’s books and manuscripts department in Paris, the sale was a “total success.” “It was like in normal times,” she said. “We had some rarities on sale and the buyers were there, just like usual.”

Gildings, the fine art auctioneer has a sale of Antiquarian Books tomorrowm at the Market Harborough auction rooms. Among the lots is Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", in four illustrated Volumes, with wood engravings by Eric Gill. It's a limited edition number 95/500, printed and published at The Golden Cockerel Press in 1929 and bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe. The estimate is £2000 to £3000. I've seen another set priced at well above this with an antiquarian bookseller so it will be interesting to see what it sells for.

I was particularly attracted to this particular item because of the Eric Gill engravings. His work is well known and his strong association with the arts and crafts movement is well known, but some of you may not know that one of the most popular fonts to be found on the computer (and of course in books and print) is Gill Sans which he devloped at around the same time as he produced the engravings for this Chaucer set.

There’s a curious case going on in the courts in Durham. A man is currently on bail after walking into the Folger Shakespeare library, in Washington DC, with a first folio edition of the Bard’s works valued at £15million. Experts believe the copy to be the one stolen from Durham University Library in December 1998. The antiques dealer who is on bail has publicly denied stealing the work and claims it was in Cuba he acquired the copy he took to be verified. He has said he would welcome a day in court to clear his name and has publicly expressed confidence that he will escape charges.

Today I was having a look on the second hand book web site Add All at Ian Fleming's James Bond books. I was amazed how many are for sale and especially first editions. There's a first edition of Live and Let Die for a little over £11,000, a first edition of Moonraker for £16,000 and a first edition of Casino Royale for £25,000. Of the latter title there were only 4,750 published of the first edition.

It's proof of the enduring appeal and continued collectability of Ian Fleming's books, especially those in very good condition. As with many other first editions one signed by the Ian Fleming are highly prized often adding as much as 30% to the value of the book. Adrian Harrington in London offers this first edition of Casino Royale for £18,750; it's unsigned. But don't think every copy of Casino Royale costs a fortune, if you just want a copy to read a Penguin Modern Classic from 2004 will only set you back a penny!