George Eliot, The Legend of Jubal and other poems (Blackwood 1874). First Edition. Spine faded and some foxing on the endpapers, otherwise a very good copy. Bookplate. £8.50.
J. W. Cross (ed), George Eliot’s Life as related in her Letters and Journals. Arranged and Edited by her Husband J.W.Cross. In three vols. Blackwood 1885. Original cloth marked and worn, and the hinges strained. An uncommon book, and one that is much in demand. £10 No copy found online
Too right ! The condition of this copy attests to its value as a source of information on Eliot’s life. The novelist is worshipped by her legion of fans to the extent that the longstanding George Eliot Society is one of the best supported members of the Alliance of Literary Societies, of which your blogger is a committee member. She may not be as trendy as Jane Austen nowadays, but as a female novelist and intellectual she is internationally esteemed.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chatto 1926. The scarce first English edition. Spine slightly faded and worn. Name on the endpaper. £15.00 . A copy rebound in modern leather is currently priced online at £3,300
This year is the centenary of one of the greatest American novels. Actual firsts can change hands for six figures and although the item for sale is only a first English edition, without it appears, a jacket, its value has jumped from £15 to over £1,000 for one copy online in poor condition since this Sims catalogue appeared.
Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever, Cape 1956. First edition. Presentation copy to his friend Leonard Russell : ‘ To Leonard on whose back I ride. With affection from Ian’.
Fine copy in d.w. £30.00 £3,000 – £10,000
An early, sought after Bond title. Russell was a journalist and a champion of Fleming’s work.
Ian Fleming, For Your Eyes Only, Cape 1960. First edition. Presentation copy to his friend Leonard Russell, the literary editor of the Sunday Times. Inscribed: ‘ To Leonard whom I miss from Ian’. Fine copy in d.w. £30.00 £3000+
Lucky Leonard to have two Flemings presented to him by the author.
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari Frier Minor, Demoniality. Translated into English from the Latin ( with introduction and notes by the Rev. Montague Summers. Fortune Press N.D. This is the special issue of 90 copies on Arnold unbleached had-made paper, numbered and signed by Summers, bound in full vellum, gilt with yapp edges. Rare. In perfect state. £20.00 £800 unsigned.
Sims catalogued this as a rare Fortune Press publication in the days when the publisher specialised in luxurious pornography and the occult. Later on he found that there was more money to be made bringing talented young poets, like Amis and Larkin, to the public attention in cheap editions. Today he is rightly praised for this decision, even though his business ethics, not to mention his production standards, left a lot to be desired. Summers’ translation of a classic text by is a very handsome volume indeed and worth having in this signed state, especially bearing in mind the collectability of anything bearing the name of Montague Summers, a very untypical cleric.
Roy Fuller. Original MS. POEMS & LETTERS. Two holograph letters and four poems sent to John Lehmann, 1941/2. The poems are signed and titled by the author: ‘ Royal Naval Air Station’; ‘The Dream’; ’Sonnet’; ‘Poem’. The first letter was written from Lee-on-Solent, the second after he had gone abroad: ‘The censor won’t let me say very much. Under most trying conditions I’ve written one little poem…there is much material: much emotion but no tranquillity to recollect it in!…I’ll try to let you have, when this voyage is over, some of the gruesome details of it—all that is taboo just now. I long for bookshops and cinemas & armchairs & sweet spring in England’. £35.00
Unlike most of the ‘Auden Generation ‘, who were products of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Roy Fuller (1912 – 91) was articled to a solicitor at 16 and subsequently joined the Woolwich Building Society, where he remained for fifty years, ending up as head of its legal department. He wrote poems from an early age and saw his debut collection, Poems published in 1939. In his very entertaining memoir, Spanner and Pen (1991), he wrote affectionately of his long friendship with John Lehmann and regretted the decline in his reputation as a critic.
Norman Gale, A Country Muse (Constable 1894). First edition. ‘ . Copy no. 8 of the special issue of 15 L.P. copies on Japanese vellum. Original grey boards marked. Otherwise a nice copy of this rare issue. £12.50 £7.00 for a trade edition.
David Gascoyne , Opening Day ( Cobden-Sanderson 1933). First edition. The author’s second book, preceded by Roman Balcony (1932)…Nice copy of this rare book in a slightly marked d.w. £30.00. unavailable online
A much sought after book by the surrealist poet. One of my interviewees found a copy on the Farringdon Road a few years ago for a few pence. Back in 1994 I interviewed Gascoyne in his home on the Isle of Wight. He had been one of the contributors to my festschrift to Geoffrey Grigson in 1985 and I was delighted to meet him. I recall that we ate shepherd’s pie cooked by his charming wife and during the evening he pointed to a place on the wall of his sitting room where a painting that Max Ernst had given to him once hung. I was shocked to hear that Gascoyne had had to sell it to pay for medical expenses. Around the same time I learned that Grigson himself had sold a nice Ben Nicholson given to him by the artist to pay for central heating at his cave house in France.
R. M. Healey