BOOKS OF VALUE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 79, 27 December 1928, Page 6

BOOKS OF VALUE

ON HOUSEHOLD SHELVES RARE WORKS OF LIVING AUTHORS It is strange how few people are aware of the treasures that may be lurking upon their library shelves (states “Life and Letters”). Collectors are a race apart; the reading public, casual and ignorant, buys a book upon its publication, and is content to leave it for ever afterwards as part of the disregarded furniture of the house. Even the publicity given to a sale by auction of Mr. Kipling’s “Schoolboy Lyrics” (18S1) for £5BO fails to prompt the ordinary reader to an examination of his possessions. Thus an artificial scarcity in the works of living writers is produced, and the demented collector, who must, possess or perish, pays unwarranted sums for books that have all the appearance of rarity, and yet are probably lying in their hundreds on the dusty shelves .of the uninitiated. It is impossible to believe that Mr. James Stephen’s “Crock of Gold” (1912) is so rare that £l7 should be its real value. There must be in existence many undiscovered copies of Mr. Masefield’s “Salt Water Ballads” (1902). Strange fluctuations have taken place in the value of this book; for many years it was considered dear at £l5. The critic have not been kind to Mr. Masefield’s reputation, but the collector has always ignored their diatribes, and the belief in the importance of Mr. Masefield’s work is strongly held. In 1927 this book attained the price of £42; a year later

it had fallen to £3l. The speculative market moves, like the Stock Exchange, with the varying opinion of the writer’s worth, but those who trouble themselves to watch the market are few and far between. Forced recently to wait in an empty drawing-room, the writer of this article saw amongst a

mass of rubbish a forgotten copy of Mr. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” (1896). The lady who owned it was totally unaware that she could obtain for it some £5O from any bookseller she chose to honour with its sale. It is not only ignorance of value that accounts for the scarcity of various modern books; other factors make for the same result. It is not probable, for instance, that the first four novels of Mr. Galsworthy are as rare as they appear to be. “From the Four Winds” (1897), “Jocelyn” (IS9S), “Villa Rubein” (1900), and “A Man of Devon” (1901), were all published under the name of John Sin-John, and it is not surprising that many people fail to recognise in such guise the popular novelist. The last of the four is the rarest, and cannot be obtained for less than £2O. The effect of a nom de plume in keeping a book out of the market may account also for the rarity of Mr. De La Mare’s “Songs of Childhood” (1902). Walter Ramal is an effective disguise, and the book is worth some £5O. It is rarely in good

condition. The white back, like the white label of “Villa Rubein,” is usually discoloured and often broken. But of all these books it can be confidently asserted that time will disclose large numbers of copies overlooked or forgotten. Many modern books, however, are genuinely scarce. The little pamphlet in thin vellum covers called “The Allahabarrie Book, of Broadway Cricket,” written by Mr. Barrie in 1599 and privately printed, is difficult to fiud. The drawings and photographs that illustrate it are very amusing; the text a little too funny to stand the test of time. Nevertheless, an inscribed copy has fetched £IOS at auction. Mr. George Moore’s “Pagan Poems” (1881) is worth £3O, though the book is always mutilated, the author having torn out the title-page from every copy on which he could lay his hand. The poems are redolent of the Baudelaire period. Mr. Moore’s first book, “Flowers of Passion” (1878), is very rare and also costs £3O. It is even more juvenile in its borrowed cadences; no one could

discern in these early works the accomplished master of English prose. The writer has no copy of Mr. Yeats's first book, “Musada” (18S6), worth some £BO, but the same author’s “Where There is Nothing” (1902) is almost as scarce. Only ten copies in grey paper covers were printed in New York, and when the existence of the book is thoroughly realised, its value is likely to be great. Mr. Artliu. Machen’s “The Anatomy of Tobacco” (1884), in its white vellum covers, is also difficult to fir 1 and costs at least £l5. The titlepage states that it was written by Leolinus Siluriensis, Professor of Fumifical Philosophy in the University of Brentford, and this amusing parody of scholastic logic escaped all eyes but those of the fastidioi□ until it was reprinted in 1926. Mr. Machen’s translation in twelve volumes of “The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova,” which was privately printed in 1894, is worth £5O. eVen without the curious and unprocurable illustrations. Mr. Aldous Huxley’s “Jonah," printed in paper covers'at Oxford in 1917, cannot be obtained for less than £l2. Many of the poems have never been reprinted, typical as they are of war nostalgia and interesting as the seed of which “Leda” was to be the flower. These lost first books of established poets must be interesting to their admirers. The early effort of a writer contains the essence of his inspiration and personality, and even what he has chosen to discard in maturity throws a light on his mental progress. Mr. Gordon Bottomley’s “Poems at White-Nights,” published bv the Unicorn Press in 1899 (£10), Mr. W. H. Davies's “The Soul’s Destroyer,” printed in paper covers by the author in the Marshalsea Road, S.E., in 1906 (£10), and Mr. Siegfried Sassoon’s “Poems,” printed anonymously in 1906 (£25), are important autobiographical links in the

history of modern poetry. The prices quoted may give the impression that all the rare modern books are beyond any but the rich man’s purse. Many, in fact, are cheap enough. Mr. Belloc’s “Extracts from the Diaries ami Letters of Hubert Howard,” published at Oxford in 1899, can be bought for a few shillings. It does not appear in booksellers’ catalogues. Everybody has forgotten that he ever wrote it; probably he does not remember it himself. Mr. Arnold Bennett’s “Sidney Yorke's Friend,” published by the Chatterbox Library in 1901, easily escapes the eye of the collector. Its author is described as E. A. Bennett, and its “yellow-back” cover, with the flamboyant illustration of a runaway gig cannot easily be connected with the comfortable security of so eminent a novelist ' , An author springs into fame and people begin to collect his works, but until some eager bibliographer has ransacked the British Museum and given an authoritative catalogue of a man’s writings, it is hard enough to find them. The later works of Mr. Norman Douglas are to be found in many libraries, but few have seen his

pamphlet “On the Herpetology of the Grand Duchy of Baden,” reprinted from “The Zoologist” in 1594, or his essay “On the Darwinian Hypothesis of Sexual Selection,” reprinted from “Natural Science” in 1895. Even less likely to be noticed is his “Report on the Tumice Stone Industry of the Lipari Islands,” published as a_ Foreign Office document also in 1895. In the same way those who scour Paris for the pornographic incoherences of “Ulysses” are apt to overlook a little pink pamphlet published by Mr. James Joyce in Dublin in 1901, called “The Day of the Rnbblement.” None of these rarities are as yet very expensive if they can be found. Unfortunately, it is only by chance that they are discovered. No modern book has the multitudinous bibliographical “points” that disturb the sleep of the collectors of Dickens.’ But “points” have already been discovered in many modern books, and, as value is affected, cannot be overlooked. It is only possible to give a few illustrations of these obscurities. On the title-page of the first edition of Mr. Bernard Shaw’s “Ou Going to Church,” published in New York in 1896, the date should be above the red design. In Mr. Arthur Symons’s “An Introduction to the Study of Browning,” at the foot of the first page of advertisements should be the mystic numbers 5.G.9.86. At the foot of the back strip of Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who was Thursday” (190 S should be the words "J. W. Arrowsmith.” The lettering on the back strip of Mr. Lytton Strachey’s “Landmarks in French Literature,” published by the Home University Library, should be gilt. The cover of Mr. D. H. Lawrence’s “Movements in European History,” published in 1921 under the name of Lawrence H. Davison, should be blue. Such “points” will accumulate as the years go by and the ceaseless activity of bibliographers bring them to light No doubt they excite the smile of the layman, since the hobbies of others are always absurd. They are, however, the finesse of the art of collecting books, and careful regard to them, even if it bring no intellectual pleasure, entails a sure financial reward.