The fate of the Sangorski Omar 2

The second and last part of an article on Sangorski's  ill-fated Omar Khayyam binding. It was found in
Piccadilly Notes: an occasional  publication devoted to books, engravings and autographs (1929).   A contemporary eyewitness account talks of Sangorski's Omar with its 'gold leaf blazing and the light flashing from hundreds of gemstones studding the tails of the peacocks on the cover..' Less commonly known is  the odious role played by New York customs officials in the affair and that the magnificent book was, in fact, making its second trip across the Atlantic when it was lost forever beneath the waves. J.H. Stonehouse writes:

Sangorski made six separate designs for the book; two for each of the outside covers, doublures and the fly leaves. In the front cover, the eyes of the peacock's feathers were jewelled with 97 topazes, all of which were specially cut to the correct shape of the eye, and the crests of the birds being suggested by 18 turquoises; while rubies were inset to form eyes. The surrounding border and corner pieces were set with 289 garnets, turquoises and olivines (peridots);

Djuna Barnes 'The Ladies Almanack' (1928)

Found in one of our catalogues from 2002 a very limited and exquisite edition of Djuna Barnes's The Ladies Almanack. It was found by Martin Stone in Paris and was catalogued by him for us. It sold fairly easily to a high end London dealer for £5000.

Djuna Barnes 'The Ladies Almanack' (Privately published, Paris 1928)

Small 4to.  pp 80. Illustrated. Number 4 of  10 copies on Verge de Vidalon with illustrations hand coloured by Djuna Barnes. The  complete first edition  was 1050 copies  In full vellum wraps with highly attractive hand coloured cover. Signed on the limitation page in Djuna Barnes hand as 'A Lady of Fashion' and also on fep presented  to Lady Rothermere signed  'Djuna Barnes, Paris 1928.' Lady Rothermere was married to the press baron Viscount Rothermere (Lord Harmsworth) and was  the patron of various writers most notably T.S. Eliot who was able to give up his bank job due to her financial assistance. 'Ladies Almanack'  was printed by Darantiere in Dijon and has a curious publishing history - it was originally to be published by Edward Titus at the Black Manikin Press in Paris. However when Djuna Barnes found out how much Titus was charging her she decided to publish and distribute the book herself with financial help from Robert McAlmon. The name Edward Titus is blacked out on the title page in all copies. The ordinary edition was $10, the hand coloured one of 40  $25 and the ten hand coloured and signed copies were $50 a sizeable sum in 1928. The work, a celebration of female sexuality and a rebuke to heterosexual patriarchy, portrays in disguised form, many of the cultural and artistic elite of the Parisian avant garde of the time- epecially the Lesbian circle which was gathered around Natalie Clifford Barney - Janet Flanner, Romaine Brooks, Solita Solano, Dolly Wilde ('Doll Furious') Lady Una Troubridge ('Lady Tilly Tweed-in-Blood') and Radclyffe Hall. Janet Flanner called her 'the most important woman writer we had in Paris.' In fine  fresh condition - an exemplary copy of this beautiful expatriate book; in tirage de tete the black orchid of Lesbian literature.

I once met….. William Rees Mogg

Sent in by a Jot regular - this moving account. In the rare book trade he was renowned for having returned an expensive book he had bought from another bookseller, saying 'I did not find it as saleable as I had hoped.' Only someone as eminent as the ex-editor of The Times could get away with such an excuse. The shot below is of him with Mick Jagger at a TV discussion in 1967 after William Rees Mogg's 'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel' editorial condemning a jail term handed to Mick for dope offences. At the time he was 10 years older than the great Stone.

This was after he’d left the editorial chair of The Times and was running the very posh Pickering and Chatto antiquarian bookshop in Pall Mall. Before I arranged to interview him I had mugged up on his tastes by reading the guide to book collecting that  he’d published a few years earlier. I must admit that I was a little intimidated by his reputation—not just as a high Tory patrician figure from the higher reaches of journalism—but also as someone whose refined tastes in Augustan literature were likely to show up my own thin knowledge of this area.

I needn’t have worried. He turned out to be charming, friendly, and not at all pompous. Knowing that I might be caught out if the conversation turned into a debate on the respective merits of Pope or Burke, I made most of my questions revolve around his youthful exploits as a collector of eighteenth century literature in wartime and post-war London. In this regard he turned out to be immensely informative. I learned, for example that during the forties an increasing supply allied to a decreasing demand for antiquarian books meant that dealers were able to acquire choice copies of excellent titles for small sums and pass on these books for a reasonable profit to modest collectors like himself. Back then, it was possible to assemble an interesting library and not pay more than ten shillings for any book. He had bought the 68 volume first edition of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets for £7 15 shillings. Other collectors with bigger pockets, like Geoffrey Keynes, were also able to create  formidable libraries in this period.

Rees Mogg also revealed that on a long plane journey he was more likely to take a copy of Ivanhoe than Pope and that he’d sold most of his Pope collection to the New York Public Library. Most fascinating of all, however, was his anecdote concerning the acquisition of a rummer engraved 'Blake in anguish, Felpham 1804'. He’d seen it in a Christies catalogue, decided to view it, and eventually bought it for £55. He later sold it to the famous Corning Glass collection in New York, where it is now recognised as the only glass ever engraved by William Blake.

Aluminium / Aluminum

We did a posting on our old site Bookride on Chick Marrs Quinn's unfindable book The Aluminium Trail a self published and much wanted book about US aerial operations in the Pacific Area in WW2  The book is dedicated to 1st Lt. Loyal Stuart Marrs, Jr., Chick's husband who was killed February 27, 1945.  The 'aluminum trail' title refers to the pattern of air crashes in the difficult Indo-China regions, especially the Himalayas. People who lost relations and loved ones flying so far from home eagerly want this rare book and not a few libraries. Amazon sometimes has it at bearable prices.  As for Aluminum (or Aluminium as it is known in Britain) Everybody's Book of Facts (1940s) reveals this:

 The youngest child of the great family of metals is aluminium, which 50 years ago was as expensive as silver, just as silver was once more precious than gold, and iron more valuable than either. The first to isolate it was the German chemist Friedrich Wohler in 1827. Napoleon the Third used an aluminium spoon at state banquets, and had a set of buttons for his uniform of the same substance. It then cost about £109 a pound. In 1880 only 70 pounds were produced annually; in 1885 13 tons; in 1926 some 200,000 tons; now even cooking vessels are made of aluminium.

The metal is never found by itself but always in combination with other elements, including clay. The United Staes is the chief producer, although it is believed that aluminium worth about £288 million is available in the Gold Coast colony. The largest night sign in the world is made of this metal. It  graces the RCA building in Rockefeller Centre, New York, is 24 feet high and outlined in  neon lighting.

1920s Rare Book 'Wants' list

An old list (a 24 page pamphlet) put out by a superior antiquarian bookshop (Walter T. Spencer) in 1920s London. The bookseller has noted almost every single desirable book at that time. Many titles are now forgotten, no longer wanted, impossible to find OR still extremely valuable or even more wanted now than then (e.g. Jane Austen, The Brontes, Beardsley, Wilde.)

BOOKS AND PRINTS 

SPECIALLY WANTED TO BE PURCHASED 

- BY - 

WALTER T. SPENCER, 

27, NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C. 

(Opposite Mudie's Library and near the British Museum). 

Telephone No. 5847 Central. Telegraphic Address- "Phiz, London." Private Address- CULVER HOUSE, THE ESPLANADE, SHANKLIN, ISLE OF WIGHT.

---

Bankers - LONDON & COUNTY (New Oxford St. Branch).

---

Any Parcels of Books sent, I willingly pay carriage both ways, if we do not come to terms.

---

Cash always sent by Return Post. Established 1884

---

→ Shall be glad to hear of Imperfect Copies or Odd Vols of any Books or odd plates in this List.

Many of the books were very rare even then - especially anonymous pamphlets put out by the Romantics and items such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's impossible first book Battle of Marathon. Spencer's list encapsulates bookseller wisdom of his age and rarities passed down from 19th century book sellers. These were the 'sexy' books of his day and some of them are still appearing on wants list, some no longer wanted or too easily found (e.g. Charles Lever, Frank Smedley, Walter Scott.)

Spencer, known in the trade as 'Tommy', wrote a memoir "40 Years in my Bookshop" (London 1923) that reveals part of his story. Spencer's dates were possibly 1866-1964, he is unknown to Wikipedia and the DNB but these old booksellers lived long lives. He was a major book seller of his time, a friend of forger Thomas J. Wise and appears to have dabbled in forgery himself. His shop was at 27 New Oxford Street and he dealt in prints, plate books, bound sets, the Romantics, Americana, first editions of his time (Wilde, Conrad, Galsworthy, etc.). A big Dickens man, popular with visiting American plutocrats like pickle king Henry J. Heinz and numbering among his customers, Sir Henry Irving, Gladstone, George Meredith, Andrew Lang, Gissing, Pater, Swinburne, and Richard Jefferies. Specialist bookseller (1890s) Tim D'Arch Smith recalls Spencer trading from Upper Berkeley Street in the late 1950s. He even remembers his bookseller code - 'TWICKENHAM' with T standing for one, W for 2 etc., 

 O.F. Snelling wrote in a book trade memoir '...much of what he knew has certainly gone into limbo...some of the best tales I ever heard of Spencer's dealings never got into his book.' He was a constructor of false provenances, involved with some fake Shaw letters, a maker up of questionable sets of Dickens in the parts and would also 'sophisticate' books with unacknowledged facsimiles. His 1920 wants list (undoubtedly effective) could, to a great degree, have been the source of his fortune. It partly answer bibliophile A.E. Newton's remark- 'How he does it, where he gets them, is his business.' There is often an ingenious trick or stratagem behind fortunes made in the book or art trade.

The first book mentioned Absurdities In Prose & Verse is illustrated by Alfred Crowquill (pic by him above) with 13 hand coloured plates and now goes for £150 + in nice condition, for the ninth book in the list - A Declaration of the State of Virginia (1620) sells for circa £15000. It is likely that Spencer put many standard collector's books in his list to hide the occasional devastatingly valuable book. 

Absurdities In Prose Verse, 1827 Account of New South Wales, 1804 -Any Books published by him, with coloured plates Actors by Daylight, 1838-9, 55 Nos. Actors by Gaslight, 1838, 37 Nos. Adair (J.) History of American Indians, 1775 Adam (R. and J.) Works in Architecture, 3 vols, folio, 1778, &c. Addison (J.) Damascus and Palymyra, 2 vols, 1838 A Day's Ride, second edition A Declaration of the State of Virginia, 1620 A Dialogue in the Shades, 1766 Adonais, an Elegy on the DEAth of John Keats, by P. B. S., Pisa,1821 Adventures of a Post Captain, with coloured plates, d (1821) Adventures of Count Fathom, 2 vols, 1753 Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaesv, 2 vols, 1762 Adventures of Ulysses, 1808 Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy, 1818 Adventures of Mr. Ledbury, 3 vols, 1844 or 1846 Advice, a Satire, 4to, 1746

Bay Psalm Book, 1640

This is an edited  reposting from our sister site Bookride first posted in June 2007. Sotheby's NY is selling a copy in November 2013 and expecting $30 million. It is about to go on a tour of America. Sadly our archive does not have a copy although it is worth noting that the same printing press (shipped over by the pilgrims) also produced some ephemera...

"...we have therefore done our endeavor to make a plain and familiar translation of the psalms and words of David into English metre, and have not so much as presumed to paraphrase to give the sense of his meaning in other words; we have therefore attended herein as our chief guide the original, shunning all additions, except such as even the best translators of them in prose supply, avoiding all material detractions from words or sense." From the introduction to the Bay Psalm Book, 1640. 

THE WHOLE BOOKE OF PSALMES. Faithfully translated into English Metre. (The Bay Psalm Book.) [Cambridge, Mass.] : Imprinted by S. Daye, 1640. Compiled and translated by John Cotton; Richard Mather; John Eliot; Thomas Weld; Stephen Day; Matthew Day; Adrian Van Sinderen. 

The Bay Psalm Book was the common hymnal of the Massachusetts Bay colony. An American icon, a piece of heroic history - it was both the first book printed in the Colonies and it was also the first book entirely written in the Colonies. Printed 20 years after the first arrivals in Plymouth in 1620 on the first printing press in New England which was purchased and imported from London specifically to print this book. In 1639 the press printed first the Freeman’s Oath and then an almanac, no copies of which are extant. The mind boggles at the value that could be attached to these.

The translations were prepared by a committee of approximately thirty clergymen, including Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Weld. The preface is generally attributed to Mather, although some scholars believe it was written by John Cotton. The book went through several editions and was in use for well over 100 years.