ABMR - The Antiquarian and Book Monthly Review

There are now no popular magazines in the UK covering the field of rare and antiquarian books. Just seven years ago there were two—Rare Book Review and Book and Magazine Collector –and I wrote regularly for both of them. First to fold was Rare Book Review, a very glossy and well designed affair financed by a wealthy dealer. Previously this had been known for many years as the Antiquarian Book Review, and before this as the clumsily-titled Antiquarian Book Monthly Review, an early issue of which we have here.

When we consider how well designed and glossily produced magazines covering other fields in the arts –such as fashion and the fine arts—it is astonishing how unglamorous this particular magazine must have appeared to the eye of someone familiar with, say, Vogue,  the Burlington Magazine, or Country Life at that time. To arrive at something that could compete in visual terms with these titles it took over 40 years and oodles of dealer's dough. It isn’t as if there had never been glossies that had dealt with aspects of the antiquarian book trade---The Bookman, a product of the twenties and thirties, being the most notable.

The idea for a new popular magazine distinct from the academic Book Collector and the dryasdust Clique,

Etching of Farringdon Road bookstalls in the 1930s

Photographs exist of the famous bookstalls in Farringdon Road, dating from the nineteen forties and fifties, and the one by Moholy-Nagy that illustrates the excellent London Street Markets, was taken in the thirties. But as far as I know, the stalls were never the subject of an etching, of whatever date. Here, dated 1934, is an etching by the brilliantly talented Nathaniel Sparks (1880 – 1956), one of the most popular masters of this art, which of course became moribund almost overnight as a result of the Wall Street Crash.

During the American-led collecting craze, which began just before the First World War, Sparks produced a huge number of etchings, many of them of notable London landmarks such as Westminster Abbey and Tower Bridge, and it is surely a sign of its fame in the thirties that Sparks regarded Farringdon Road as a fit subject for an etching. At that time he was doubtless a customer at the stalls himself, and it is known that in his last sad months, when poverty and illness had him holed up as a lodger in Somerton, he comforted himself by collecting old books. It is also likely that in the last half of a largely peripatetic life, which saw him living with gypsies and farmers in Somerset and the New Forest, he was forced to jettison many of the books he had picked up over the years, in favour of his paints and paper.

Naturally shy, physically slight, and all too aware of the severe rhinophyma which disfigured his face, Sparks sometimes cut a pathetic figure. He could not help compare his ill luck with the fame and fortune that attended his much older cousin, Thomas Hardy, and recorded his resentment in an unpublished satire. Things came to a head in 1940 when an enemy bomb smashed his printing press and he was forced to abandon etching entirely and eke out a living producing pellucid watercolours of scenery in his beloved Somerset.
[R.M.Healey]

The author is grateful for the excellent Nathaniel Sparks Gallery for allowing him to reproduce the two etchings.


Now have proof positive that the etching is of Exmouth Market! (ed.)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

A submission via our SUBMIT button (above) from one Grace (many thanks) about a rare children's book. This is more the kind of thing we used to do at Bookride but it contains a little new info. The 'point' on the book is that  a true first edition (World Publishing, USA 1969) must have a  full number line on the copyright page, “1 2 3 4 5 73 72 71 70 69″.The back cover should have ‘A3450′ on the bottom right. A d/w might turbo-charge it into $10000…on the other hand it may be a little vieux chapeau in the rapidly changing world of children's book collecting and it would be interesting to see if this one sells for a significant sum sans jacket… 1stedition.net go on exhaustively  about every aspect of the book's collectability. Grace writes:

My husband and I have had a strong interest in antique and collectible books, always on the look out for something unusual.  We've been impressed with the value of a book that we came across on more than occasion.  But, the last place we expected to come across a rare book was among our kids' extensive library.

Many of the books they have piled on their shelves are books that I have saved from my own childhood, which are of more sentimental value to me than anything.

Among my favorites are many Little Golden Books,

How to Buy Books 1892 and 2015

J.H. Slater's Book Collecting - A Guide for Amateurs (Swan Sonnenschein, London 1892) concludes with a still useful chapter - 'Books to Buy.' The author regrets that there is no device (vademecum) 'capable of being carried in the waistcoat pocket which will enable him to spot a rarity at a glance...' This was just over 100 years before smartphones which, to some extent, now fulfil this very purpose (and if the book has a barcode there are also applications that will emit a noise telling you to buy.) The reference to the need for a register of 'scarce but mean-looking' English books (now known as 'sleepers' and which every good book scout or 'runner' has in his or her head) concludes with a florid latin quotation concerning glory..

Slater starts by mentioning the pathologically acquisitive bookseller Naude and the rich bibliomane Heber...

But Naude had the wealth of Mazarin at his back, and free licence to purchase as and where he would at the Cardinal's expense, while Heber was rich beyond the dreams of avarice;the modern book hunter, whose means we will suppose are limited, must discard the yard measure and the scales, and rely on his judgment, taking care to get the utmost value for his money. He will have to make up his mind to buy or not to buy on the spur of the moment, for while he is consulting his books of reference at home, a golden opportunity may be missed. This is his capital difficulty, and one which it will take years of experience to surmount, for there is no vade mecum capable of being carried in the waistcoat pocket, which will enable him to spot a rarity at a glance ; nothing, in fact, which can compensate for a lack of practical knowledge.

Tales from the Second Hand Book Trade 6

There is a variant British version of the last tale from America...

A small provincial bookseller is called to a substantial mansion on the edge of town, full of valuable books. The new owner has inherited the collection and is selling the house and trying to sell all the contents, including the books. The bookseller is overwhelmed by the sight of rows of pristine signed Rackhams in limpid vellum, rare bound books of 18th century travel, 19th century literature fine in the original cloth, even the odd 20th century classic like a first signed Ulysses and a wrappered Gatsby and  many 1930s first editions almost fine in dust jackets (Greene, Hemingway, Tolkien, Orwell etc.,) And then are the rows of exquisitely bound classic works including a superb Jane Austen set... He decides the collection is far too rich for his blood and and, as they now say, 'above his pay grade' - so he puts the collection on to a prestigious West End shop for a 10% finder's fee.

Later that week the London dealer swings by his local side street shop in a bloody great long wheel base Merc van full of boxes of books and hands him a £1000 in cash. Somewhat put out, the local bookseller asks what happened. 'I asked the chap if he had a figure in mind and he said he wanted £10,000,' replies the suave metropolitan bookseller.

Tales from the Second Hand Book trade 1

In the dog days of summer we present a post from our former site Bookride. It was billed there as one of several 'Tall Tales from the Trade' but as I recall it is pretty much true except that Pecksniff's may have been called Greasby's. There are other racy tales from this exciting (and vanished) world to follow...

It's 1977, in the year of the Jubilee, punk rock is in the air, Big Jim Callaghan is in Downing Street and a bookseller in King's Cross London is involved in a long - running dispute over rent with a corrupt and greedy landlord. The landlord, call him Rachman, wants him out so that he can develop the building into flats and keeps raising the rent and hassling the young bookseller at every opportunity.

The guy supposedly owes £5000 in back rent and 'reparations' and on a Thursday evening a bailiff in a bowler hat arrives with a couple of thuggish sidekicks to seize the guy's entire stock in lieu of this amount. It is a very smart and well chosen stock worth £50K minimum but if seized it will be sold at Pecksniffs - a seedy auction house specialising in bankrupt stock. It will probably make a tenth of its true value and our bookseller will be destitute -sans money and sans books. He manages to persuade the bowler hatted one to accept £100 and says that he will have the rest on Monday after he has been down to the country to borrow the money from his father. This is quite plausible because the guy, like a lot of booksellers of the time, appears to be a public school type with a vague air of privilege, albeit slightly shabby, and likely to have moneyed parents. In fact his dad was a teacher with nothing more than a flat in Roehampton and a bicycle.

The bailiff disappears into the gathering gloom and the dealer immediately gets on the blower to his network of dealer friends. The call goes out to the London trade that he will buy any book for 5 pence (10 cents.) Battered Volvos, trucks, vans arrive laden with London's lousiest, most unsaleable books.