the book collector
Go online and read about it at ‘There was a Bookish Man’, an Observer classic. Jay Rayner’s account is the best, not least because we learn from it that George I, in gratitude to the University of Cambridge for having supported his scarcely sat-upon throne during the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, bestowed upon it the library of John Moore, Bishop of Ely, in which there reposed these two copies of Principia and other nice things. Thus does history make its connections. the big lie about books was totally disproved by this year’s York National Book Fair where three floors of dealers and three floors of happy bustle made for yet another record year. The total take was over £ 900,000, up 10% on last year. What was particularly encouraging was the substantial presence from overseas in the form of both dealers and visitors. Indeed, for the hundred-odd (as opposed to hundred odd) members of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, it was to be one of the highlights of their week’s tour of the great libraries of the north. The fair’s organisers point out that both the average and the median take was well up, showing that the success of the fair benefited most exhibitors. For its part, the book collector was well placed on two accounts, by being at the very entrance and having a stand next to the Private Libraries Association. Note to the organisers: same again next year, please! graham chainey has been to Brighton. While there he remarked upon the Brighton & Hove Bus Company’s tradition of naming its vehicles after famous former residents. A Graham Greene trundled past (number 640) and ‘a bit later, Fanny Burney, Tom Paine and Eric Gill went by in convoy’, he told readers of the TLS. After a while he got onto the subject of the dustwrapper of Brighton Rock , which arrived in the bookshops in July 1938. It is, he says, the scarcest dustwrapper in ex- istence for the simple reason that even though the print run was 8,000, everybody loathed the striped rose-pink wrapper and its clunky black lettering and threw them away. Copies with the wrapper, he contin- ues, ‘fetch £ 25,000, or £ 50,000, or even £ 70,000.’ AbeBooks o V ers copies with a facsimile wrapper which is ‘clearly labelled a facsimile’, a statement which sets even an honest mind churning.
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