It has been a long time since I wrote anything here, preferring to copy my Personal Notes of old.  I have been very busy acquiring Edward Ardizzone and other illustrators but will come back to this again another time soon.

Meantime – look out for me at Stand 42 at the Antiquarian Book Fair at Olympia on May 24-26th.  I will have plenty of goodies including a collection of autograph letters by an ambulance driver in World War One, a wonderful poster by Jean Cocteau, together with some pen and ink sketches,one signed  Jean and others, unsigned,which may be by him. Come and have a look !

There is plenty more, Hogarth Press books etc much poetry – usual stuff I deal in – and illustrated, of course. See you there !

PERSONAL NOTE for Catalogue 63   Late Summer 2010

May I draw your attention to the ad I have placed somewhere in this catalogue telling anyone who may be interested that we are opening our house as a Christmas bookshop on Sunday 21^st November (from 12 noon  through to 4.00pm ). Everyone is most welcome. There will be complimentary mince pies and mulled wine.  Our house happens to lend itself to be opened up as a bookshop giving onto a garden so we thought – why not?  We have had two such ‘open days’ already this summer and they have proved very successful both as social gatherings and as magnets for book lovers. It would be a huge extra pleasure for me to actually meet some of my customers! So do come along if you fancy a trip out to Dorset before the real rush of Christmas starts to unravel everything.

      I have had a mixed summer  – a lovely few days on the Isle of Wight, lazy Sunday afternoons in our garden here in Dorset, but 2 months of being on antibiotics AND a strict diet (which I regret to say I have broken at regular intervals) ordered by a herbalist I visited (never done that before) who said my constitution needed to avoid fruit and dairy completely – this included fruit juice -  but that it needed lots more meat. Some have told me this is equivalent to the Atkins diet – but Mr Atkins fell over with a heart attack and died on the pavement, I believe,  so I have been feeling a touch ambivalent about the whole experience.

To add to this shadier side of my summer the herbalist gave me a foul tasting concoction to take before every meal. When she prescribed it and I asked her how it tasted she was honest to a point and said ‘foul’. So I can’t really complain there. But the two months are almost up and, I must confess, I am feeling much stronger in myself. Whether this is down to the herbalist or the antibiotics I can only guess.

  Meanwhile, this 63^rd catalogue under my own name (I issued about 110 as Words Etcetera some of you may remember) coincides with my 63^rd birthday at the end of August which gives me a certain quirky satisfaction for a reason I cannot fathom. Anyway, I hope it may bring you some kind of satisfaction and that I may see some of you here in November or, alternatively, at the York Book Fair on 10/11^th September or the Chelsea Book Fair on 5/6^th November. I shall be exhibiting at both.

PERSONAL NOTE for Catalogue 62 Summer 2010

Enjoying the sunny summer weather I have found it difficult, on occasion, to be disciplined, and to stay at my computer. Indeed it makes me wonder sometimes just what I could do which didn’t involve a computer.  But life is changing fast I find, and as a result and in an effort to keep up I am investing a fair bit of time  and money into updating and upgrading my website: www.nanglerarebooks.co.uk

  By the autumn I hope to be in a position to send out monthly e-catalogues to any who might like to receive them. So please, even if you want nothing from this catalogue but would like to receive regular emails listing recently catalogued stock (I have over 3000 uncatalogued items currently), please send me an email saying so and I shall put you on my ‘email list’. If you find they are not what you expected or do not interest you it will be very easy and very obvious as to how you can  ‘unsubscribe’ to such an emailing. There will be a little button you would have to click.

 Part of me is sad to have to advertise such a service having, for 40 years, sent out hard copy catalogues with much pleasure and job satisfaction. But needs must – people are not responding in anything like the numbers they used to, to hard copy catalogues, so I am hoping I may attract a new generation of book collectors in this way.  I will not stop sending out the normal catalogues, but the e-catalogues will be more regular and more frequent although smaller.The new website will also allow me to start an online ‘blog’. I realised recently that I have been blogging for years but didn’t know it. Indeed my first ‘blog’ was the Personal  Note to Cat 50 way back in 1983 ! I often wonder whether I shouldn’t gather together all my Personal Notes from the past 120 catalogues (for that is the number I have issued since Cat 50) and publish it as a ‘Bookseller’s Blogasphere’. Any publisher out there interested?!

Martin Amis 

 published in The Bookman 2011

Martin Amis, arguably the ‘bad boy’ of the late 20thC crop of novelists, published his first book in 1973. He was just 24 years old.

Born to a famous father he still had to prove himself as a writer. The wait for the first reviews of The Rachel Papers must have been a nail biting time.

His older brother Philip took a different route – that of the ‘collagist’ – after having started out in the art world as a graphic artist. Of Sally, the third Amis sibling, little is known.

   One thing that comes through the work of both brothers is the influence on them of all things American. Martin was barely 10 years old when his father took the family to Princeton  where he had a visiting chair for a year. In later life Martin developed a huge respect for and a strong friendship with the American writer Saul Bellow.

  On the controversies Martin Amis has engineered or suffered (depending on your point of view) there is not space here to comment, nor on the horrendous dental work he had to endure at the turn of this century. One thing is clear, however, love him or loathe him, Martin Amis is a creative force that cannot be ignored.

THE BOOKS (Published by Cape unless otherwise stated)

[Prices in brackets are those found on the net during August 2011]

The Rachel Papers.1973. [Signed proof £760]

Dead Babies. 1975  [£400]

Success. 1978  [£125 - £300]

Other People. 1981 [£65]

Money.1984  [£45 - £150]

The Moronic Inferno. 1986 [Signed £120]

Invasion of the Space Invaders. 1982 [Signed £90]

Einstein’s Monsters. 1987 [£30]

The Murderee. Granta, 1988. Wrappers. [£6]

London Fields. 1989 [£20]

You naturally associate babies with helplessness. Black Oak Books, Broadside. 1991 [£20]

Time’s Arrow. 1991 [Signed proof £30 / £15]

Visiting Mrs Nabokov. 1993 [£30]

Two Stories. 1994. [1/26 copies. £600]

The Information. 1995 [Signed £20]

Night Train.1997 [Signed £15]

Heavy Water and Other Stories. 1998 [Signed £15]

Experience. 2000 [Signed £30 / LTD SIGNED ED 150 copies  £150]

The War Against Cliché.  Knopf, 2001 [Signed £75]

Koba the Dread. 2002. [£12]

Yellow Dog. 2003 [£15]

The Second Plane. 2008  [£15-£18]

The Pregnant Widow 2010. [£15]

Ernest Hemingway

 Published in The Bookdealer – early 2010.

When England won the world cup in 1966 (or did we imagine it?) Hemingway had been dead 5 years.  When Neil Armstrong took his one small step for man, Hemingway had been dead 8 years. When I took by giant leap across the pond to California in 1978, my first visit to a different continent,  I ended up in Santa Barbara at Joseph the Provider’s store owned and run by Ralph Sipper.

     Hemingway had died 17 years earlier but his books lived on in wonderfully glistening, acetate covered dust wrappered first edition form on the shelves of such booksellers as Joseph the Provider. Sipper pointed to a small  wall of books – his entire stock only filled two such walls, and said ‘They are all half price, I’ve had them too long’. ‘Oh’, I stuttered, ‘how long have you had them?’

‘About three months’, he replied. So I feasted on Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and the rest, all  fully protected with acetate. It was on this trip that I learnt about the power of presentation. Once back in England I

protected every one of my books with acetate. They sparkled.

   I refer to my early visit to Joe the Pro because they currently have the rarest and most expensive Hemingway on the market; namely Three Stories and Ten Poems, published by Contact Publishing in 1923. This was Hemingway’s first book and is inscribed by him. The price is rare too:  £150,000.

  Following this publication Hemingway did not idle. The books appeared at regular intervals, as can be seen by the dates of publication which I put after the title, followed by a rough guide to a price currently being asked in good to very good condition. There may well be cheaper copies but this is a guide to the high end actually on offer out there.

In Our Time. Three Mountains Press (1924).One of 170 copies. £37,000

UK edition. Cape (1926). £275 -  £3250

The Torrents of Spring. 1250 copies. 1926. Good in 2^nd state jacket. £1000.

UK edition. Cape, 1933. Very good in jacket. £730

The Sun Also Rises.  Scribners, 1926. This book has many issue points but if all correct and in jacket. £1000.  If 2^nd Issue  £330

Men Without Women. Scribners, 1927. In 2^nd state jacket. £2600

Fiesta. Cape 1927. This is the UK edition of The Sun Also Rises and is extremely scarce. Only copy found is without jacket and faded. £600

Farewell to Arms. Scribners, 1929. Good in the jacket and INSCRIBED by Hemingway. £13,300

UK edition. Cape, 1929. 1^st Edition,  in 1^st issue jacket with heroine’s name Catherine Barkley mis-spelt Katharine Barclay. £5650 – £8000

LIMITED SIGNED EDITION. £11,000 – £12,000 (This was Hemingway’s only Limited Signed Edition)

Kiki’s Memoirs. Edward Titus, Paris, 1930. £300

Bull Fighting, Sport & Industry in Fortune’s Magazine. 1930. No copy found.

First Edition in book form. One of 26 lettered copies. 1999.    £500

Death in the Afternoon. Scribners, 1932. Very good in jacket with $3.50 price. £1650

UK edition. Fine in jacket. No copy found but probably £900. (There were two states of the UK jacket, one pictorial and one not – I believe the pictorial came later, but perhaps someone out there can confirm?)

God Rest You Merry Gentlemen. House of Books, 1933. One of 300 copies. Red cloth but lacking original glassine. £730

Winner Take Nothing. Scribners, 1933. In jacket (poor to fine) £330 – £1650

Green Hills of Africa. Scribners, 1935. Copy in 1^st issue jacket £2700. Another, without jacket £2300. But then another copy with faded cloth spine in jacket faded on spine. £830 (no issue of jacket stated)

To Have and Have Not. Scribners, 1937. Near fine in jacket.  £1000

The Spanish Earth. J.B.Savage, Cleveland. 1st Edition, 1^st Issue with F.I.A. on endpapers. With glassine wrapper £2000. Without glassine wrapper £1650

The Fifth Column and the First Forty Nine Stories. Scribners, 1938. 1^st Edition INSCRIBED by Hemingway. £8600.

UK edition. Cape, 1938. In so-so jacket  £120

Somebody Had to Do Something; a memorial to James Phillips Lardner by EH and others. Plantin Press, Los Angeles, 1939. 1/500 copies.£500

[Contains ‘On the American Dead in Spain’ by EH]

The Fifth Column; a play in three acts. Scribners, 1940. Very good in slightly dusty jacket.  £1325

For Whom the Bell Tolls. Scribners 1940. Near fine in jacket. £1225

Across the River and Into the Trees. INSCRIBED. Scribners, 1950. £4300.  Another copy, just SIGNED, in poor jacket. £3650

Gattorno.  Havana, No date (c.1950). One of 460 copies. £500 – £1325

The Hemingway Reader   Scribners, 1953. Very good in jacket. £260

Two Christmas Tales. One of 150 copies. 1959.  £975

A Moveable Feast. Scribners, 1964. Chipped jacket. £175

UK edition. Cape, 1964. Proof copy. £275

Islands in the Stream. Scribners, 1970. Fine in jacket.  £100

Hokum; a play in three acts. San Souci Press, 1978. 1/26 lettered copies. Fine in slipase. £425 or 1/73 hors commerce copies. £240

On Writing. Scribners, 1984. In jacket.  £30 – £875 (!)

Dangerous Summer. Scribners, 1985. In jacket. £5 – £115

Complete Works. 20 vols (inc True at First Light pub 1999). Easton Press, 1990.  £1000

Marlin! Big Fish Book. San Francisco 1992. £200

The Good Lion. San Francisco, 1998. One of 250 copies. £165

Concluding the Gift Part II. Stapled 8 leaves. No date and no publisher RARE £6000

Voyage to Victory. Similarly produced – no copy found..

EH’s signature on an advertising card demands an asking price of £870

     And finally…a copy of Three Stories & Ten Poems recently brought $21,600 at auction. Another notable Hemingway lot in the same sale – correspondence, drafts of an autobiography, and other papers belonging to the author’s fourth wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway, 1942-76, sold for $5,280. Safe to say Hemingway is meat not bone, and, I am sure, he would approve of such a sobriquet.

Alan Sillitoe

published in The Bookdealer, early 2010

Alan Sillitoe was a prolific and  hard working writer. By compiling the barest of checklists, I make no claims at all for its completeness, I have gained a sense of the man just by the titles and their gradual movement towards a softness in the 1990’s.

Prices of particularly collectable books from his output have been put in brackets but, for the most part, and as is well known, the only two genuinely collected books of Sillitoe’s are the first two.  The first, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning commands a hefty price in good condition especially so if signed. This is due in part to the fact that it was made into a successful film.  This was also the case for his second book, The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner, both books inspired by and reflecting his  upbringing in Nottingham, son of an illiterate father who beat him regularly.

  I was lucky enough to meet Sillitoe on a couple of occasions, and to publish some poems of his both in the 1970’s and  later, in 1988.  We met at Bernard Stone’s Turret Bookshop and I remember one conversation vividly in which Sillitoe described how to approach writing a novel. ‘You need a good take off’ he said, ‘and once up and flying you need a steady hand on the controls but nothing too flashy, and of course you need great care when coming in to land. If you can manage that you’ll have a novel’. Despite this good advice I have yet to manage writing that novel.

Below I list a good proportion of Sillitoe’s  output in date order. Where the book is scarcer than one might imagine I have put a price one might expect to pay for it in brackets.  The others are all pretty easy to find and should not cost more than £20 a piece, even in good condition.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning 1958  -

in a nice jacket(Inscribed  £1000)

Without  dust wrapper ( £450)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – in d/w , a little worn. (Inscribed   £650)

The Rats. 1960

Key to the Door. 1961

The General. 1962

The Ragman’s Daughter. 1963

A Falling Out of Love & other poems. 1964.

The Road to Volgrad. 1964

The Death of William Posters. 1965

Marmalade Jim. 1967

A Tree on Fire. 1967

Love in the Environs of Voronez. 1968

Guzman, Go Home. 1968

Shaman and other poems. Turret Books, 1968

Poems, with Ted Hughes and Ruth Fainlight. Ltd Sgd. 1971 (£300)

Travels in Nihilon. 1971

Raw Material. 1972

Men, Women and Children. 1973

Barbarians and other poems. Turret Books,1973 (500 copies)

The Flame of Life. 1974

Storm; new poems.1974

Mountains and Caves. 1975 (Inscribed £75)

Widower’s Son. 1976

Big John and the Stars. 1977

A Start in Life. 1978

Three Plays. 1978

The Storyteller. 1979

Snow on the North Side of Lucifer. 1979

More Lucifer. One of 125 copies signed. 1980

The Second Chance; stories. 1981

Her Victory. 1982

The Lost Flying Boat. 1983

The Saxon Shore Way: Gravesend to Rye. Photos by Fay Godwin. 1983

Sun Before Departure; poems. 1984

Down from the Hill. 1984 (Signed £75)

Life Goes On. 1985

Tides and Stone Walls. 1986

Every Day of the Week. 1987. (£55)

Nottinghamshire. 1987 (£40)

Out of the Whirlpool.1988

Three Poems. Words Press 1/75 copies signed.1988 (£25)

The Open Door. 1989

Last Loves. 1990

Leonard’s War; a Love Story. 1991

Snowstop. 1993

Collected Poems. 1993

The Mentality of the Picaresque Hero.  Turret Books,1993

The Broken Chariot. 1998

The German Numbers Women. 1999

Birthday.2002

A Man of His Time. 2004 (Signed £55)

Gadfly in Russia. 2007

JOHN LE CARRE

published in Bookdealer, sometime late 2010

There has been a lot of publicity surrounding the publication of  Le Carre’s latest novel Our Kind of Traitor. He gave his ‘last ever’ interview to Jon Snow on Channel 4 News the other day. The book was favourably reviewed in the Daily Telegraph by James Naughtie (although I sensed a certain hero worship in tone) and given a right pasting on  Radio 4’s Saturday Review programme, each of the four contributors claiming to be bored out of their minds. They claimed absolutely nothing happened in the first hundred pages.

And so it is with some pleasure I turn to his earlier works, one of which, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carre himself admits he is unlikely to better.

Call for the Dead  (1961)and A Murder of Quality (1962), his first two novels, are now highly collectable in their dustwrappers. A fine copy of the former can retail at as much as £9500 and the second  can command a price of £6500.

His best book, paradoxically, is far cheaper. Fine copies of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold can be bought for around £1000- £1250.

Thereafter Le Carre’s books go down in value significantly.

A  listing of the subsequent 18 or so novels will demonstrate this:

The Looking-Glass War. Heinemann, 1965. (Notoriously prone to fading on the spine of jacket). £110 without fading, with fading, nearer £65

Le Carre Omnibus of first two novels. Gollancz, 1964. £275

Small Town in Germany. Heinemann, 1968. £40. Signed £375

Naïve and Sentimental Lover. Hodder, 1971. £25 – 90. Inscribed £275

Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Hodder, 1974. £85. Inscribed £385

The Honourable Schoolboy. Hodder, 1977. £30 (on net, but the only one – so clearly scarcer than one might think)

Smiley’s People. Hodder, 1979. £80. Signed £175

The Little Drummer Girl. Hodder, 1983. £40. Signed £100

A Perfect Spy. Hodder, 1986. £35. Ltd Signed Edition £150

The Clandestine Muse. Janus Press, Vermont, 1986. Ltd Signed Edition of 250 copies.  £225 – 275.

The Russia House. Hodder, 1989. £35. Signed from £150 – £400 !

The Night Manager. Hodder, 1990. £30. Signed £85

The Secret Pilgrim. Hodder, 1991. £30. Signed £75

Sheffield Transport. Hodder, 1993. Signed £35

Our Game. Hodder, 1995. (1st issue – only 1000 printed before being recalled to change jacket design) £175

Tailor of Panama. Hodder, 1996. Signed £85

Nervous Times; a lecture. Anglo-Israeli Society.1998. Limited Edition of 250 copies signed. £225

Single & Single. Hodder, 1999. Signed £75

The Constant Gardener. Hodder, 2001. £25. Signed £35

Leaves from the Walnut Tree. Hodder, 2001.  £40

Absolute Friends. Hodder, 2003. Signed £50 – 90

The Mission Song. Hodder, 2006. Signed £45 – 100

A Most Wanted Man. Hodder, 2008. Limited Edition of 500 signed. £120. Trade Edition signed £35. Unsigned. £20

Our Kind of Traitor. Hodder, 2010. £18.99

Le Carre’s signature adds at least twice the value to an early, unsigned book if properly inscribed (although inscribed to, say, Ian Fleming, we would be talking in multiples of 5 or 10). Simply signed, however, the value would be increased by a half.  It is clear from the list above that Le Carre has been generous with his signature throughout his career.

  Now 80 years old Le Carre is not signing his early books at all, saving his hand for contemporary work, which means that some of the estimates on early books, if signed, might soon be out of date.

PERSONAL NOTE for Catalogue 61   Summer 2010

There has been so much turmoil recently it is hard to know where to begin.

 Sadly, we  decided we could not cope with our little puppy and so re- housed her with a family of  three vibrant children and another dog in a garden the size of a football pitch. We concluded that she would be happier there, which assuaged our guilt a bit. 

As I write my daughter and three grandchildren are stuck in Spain for an extra 10 days following the debacle of the Iceland volcanic eruption. At one point I thought I was going to have to drive out there to get them, but no, they are due back around now, the end of April.  I am off to America for a week in early May and will probably have just returned when you receive this.

There will be / have been an election here in Britain soon / recently – I am tempted to pontificate about the choices on offer but will resist. It is all so predictable I feel. Until we re-assess our country’s role in the world generally I fear we shall not change in any real measure whoever gets in.

  The weather recently has lifted my spirits greatly and I hope it has yours, wherever you are. May the summer prove as warming and pleasant as the Spring. I shall be at Olympia for the ABA Book Fair (Stand 109) in early June if anyone feels like visiting. I shall have different stock to that listed here. If you want a complementary pass just tell me and I’ll send you one.

PERSONAL NOTE  for Catalogue 60   Early Spring 2010

We have moved again and this time we hope we may stay more than 18 months, indeed we hope we may have found what is fashionably (and to my ear horribly) termed our ‘forever home’ – ugh.

 Anyway – the new home is far from horrible – indeed it is right opposite St George’s church on Fordington Green.  St George’s is where Horace Moule, Thomas Hardy’s early mentor is buried having  killed himself gruesomely in 1873.  Hardy was devastated by the death and lingered long over the grave at times, reflecting on his old friend. Luckily he very soon found another mentor and enthusiast for his work in Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf’s father.

   The house  was something of a wreck when  we acquired it and so we endured 4 months of patient and painstaking renovation carried out by a great one man band handyman by the name of Duncan. We owe Duncan a lot for his refusal to desert his post when many a builder would have scarpered. My step-daughter’s boyfriend, Nick, is a surveyor and when he was visiting recently he gave a relatively approving nod in the direction of the work carried out so we feel justified in going with the local rather than the London based builders whom we also asked for a quote back in September.

   To add to the newness of our life we have also acquired a puppy – a Parsons Jack Russell  called Tilly.  Our kitchen is strewn with unusable cardboard from egg boxes as a consequence but we are assured this phase ‘will pass’.  We surely hope so.

I shall be doing the Olympia Book Fair in June so hope I may see some of you there.  Until then I wish all my customers a pleasant, warm, if late Spring.

PERSONAL NOTE for Catalogue 59     Winter 2009

This catalogue will come as something of a surprise to a lot of people. I have inherited a mailing list from Richard Budd who retired last year and very kindly donated his mailing list  to me. Richard and I go back a long way, first meeting in 1971 when  he was running The Crane Bookshop for Bertram Rota Ltd , in Haslemere. I  took over his role in the shop when he decided to go out on his own as a bookseller specialising in poetry.

With Richard’s speciality  in mind I have included a fair amount of it in this catalogue, but also some other collectable books in the fields of general literature and illustrated books. There are some fine Private Press books also.

In November I was pleased to do the Chelsea Book Fair and to meet up with old friends and collectors. I will be doing the Olympia Fair next year.

Meanwhile  catalogues like this one will appear from time to time while I try  to get the website up to speed. There are a huge number of books listed there but I regret to say a good number of them are sold. I’ve not managed to remove them from the listing yet but intend to in the not too far distant future. In the new year we shall be moving back to Dorchester so watch out for the new address in the next catalogue which will appear sometime in February, hopefully.