Defaced first edition of ‘Ulysses’ valued at €13,500
Book was defaced by an irate reader who regarded the book as pornographic...
A copy of Ulysses by James Joyce in which a previous reader has written “A Pornographic Bible” under the title. Photograph: Philip Cloherty
Source: The Irish Times
By: Michael Parsons
First published:
Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 01:00
A first-edition copy of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses has been valued at €13,500 despite having been defaced by an irate reader who regarded the book as pornographic.
Galway-based rare book dealer Norman Healy, who acquired the book in London, said a previous owner had defaced the book by writing the comment “a pornographic Bible” on the famous blue paper cover beneath the title. The word “pornographic” is underlined.
Defaced books are often worthless but such is the desirability of first-edition copies of Ulysses it has been catalogued for resale at €13,500. Mr Healy said the book would normally be valued at about €10,500 but he believed the comment, added by “a previous, less than enthusiastic owner”, had enhanced the value.
The identity of the previous owner is not known but the defacement is likely to have occurred long before the book’s importance and financial value became apparent. The comment reflected the view, widely held in the early 20th century, that Ulysses was scandalous.
Ulysses was published in Paris on Joyce’s 40th birthday, February 2nd, 1922, by Sylvia Beach, an American publisher and founder of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company. A thousand numbered copies were printed, clad in soft covers that featured the title and the author’s name in white on a blue background. A copy can be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of euro, depending on the condition and whether or not it was signed or inscribed by Joyce.
For collectors of rare books, Ulysses is said to be the most sought-after and valuable 20th century first edition. The most valuable are those rare examples that still have the fragile dust-jacket wrapper intact and were signed or inscribed by Joyce.
The defaced “pornographic” copy is missing half the dust jacket and was not signed by Joyce.
The highest price achieved to date for a first edition of Ulysses was for a copy, inscribed by Joyce to Henry Kaeser, a Swiss publisher, that was sold in 2002 at Christie’s, New York, to a private collector for $460,500 (€333,600).
Of the 1,000 first-edition copies of Ulysses, 200 are reliably believed lost or destroyed. Of the 800 copies known to be extant, about half are in public collections – including that of the National Library – and the others are privately owned. Copies occasionally turn up at auction or for sale by dealers.
In the 1920s the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice ensured Ulysses was effectively banned in the United Sates and copies sent there were seized and destroyed by the post office. Despite strict censorship during the 20th century, Ulysses was not banned in Ireland but was not imported, for fear of a prosecution.
Even some of Joyce’s literary contemporaries expressed disapproval of the novel. DH Lawrence regarded Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of the novel as “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written” and told his wife: “This Ulysses muck is more disgusting than Casanova.”
Virginia Woolf was shocked by the “obscenity” she encountered in Ulysses.
In 1934, a US court ruled that the book was neither pornographic nor and obscene. Further editions were then published and the novel became available worldwide.
Era ends: Liquidation sale at Berkeley’s Serendipity Books
Source: Berkeleyside
November 7, 2013 11:00 am by Frances Dinkelspiel
Photo: Scott Brown
When Peter Howard, the owner of Serendipity Books, died in March 2011, he left behind more than one million books crammed into his two-level store on University Avenue in Berkeley with the oak barrel hanging out front.
Howard’s collection of rare and antique books was considered one of the best in the country; he often sold books and manuscripts to places like the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley or the Lilly Library at Indiana University.
The collection included so many amazing items that Bonham’s held six different auctions of his holdings, selling off early editions of John Steinbeck, a broadside by James Joyce, many modern first editions, early baseball memorabilia — even poet Carl Sandburg’s guitar.
But there are still books left to sell. More than 100,000 books, in fact.
On Saturday at 10 a.m., the doors of Serendipity Books at 1201 University Ave. will open for what will surely be one of Berkeley’s most memorable used-book fairs. Eureka Books of Eureka, California, acquired the remainder of the Serendipity collection, and will sell the books on most weekends through Dec. 15. The books start out at $5 early in the sale, and will drop to $1 each in mid-December.
“It was a one of a kind place,” said Scott Brown, the co-owner of Eureka Books, who was also a longtime Serendipity customer. “I don’t think there is another bookstore like Serendipity around.”
The bookstore was a jumble of books stacked high in shelves and in boxes and bags when Howard, 72, died of pancreatic cancer. The auctioneers moved out most of the books, but the store was still a wreck when Eureka Books came in to sort, said Brown. Workers spent weeks reassembling the place.
The mystery section of the second floor was virtually impassable, with bags of books blocking the floor. Many books were still stacked up on high shelves and were unreachable; the Eureka staff brought them down to viewing height. The shelves in the front room were almost empty, but now have been refilled with books from other parts of the store. (The shelves and other fixtures are also for sale.)
“It would not be wrong to say there were 1,000 bags and boxes filled with books in the store,” said Brown. “By the time we unpacked those I would say the whole ground floor was full again.”
Even though the best books were auctioned off, many gems remain, said Brown. There will be an entire section of 18th- and 19th-century leather books on sale for $5.
“While there are no $1,000 books laying around, we left many, many things that were priced in the hundreds,” said Brown.
Howard’s daughters plan to keep the University Avenue building and find a new tenant after the sale, said Brown. They donated Howard’s correspondence with literary luminaries like J. D. Salinger, Graham Greene and Larry McMurtry to the Lilly Library, he said.
A number of leather-bound old books will be on sale for $5 at the Serendipity Books liquidation sale.
Howard started Serendipity Books in 1967 in a small store on Shattuck Avenue and moved to the University Avenue location in 1986. Howard collected a voluminous number of books – he often bought individual’s entire collections. He had a reputation as an astute rare-book dealer. He discovered and saved many important manuscript collections, as well as collecting works by both well-known and lesser-known writers. He consulted with major libraries on what to buy and how much to bid.
“He was one of the major antiquarian book dealers of our time,” said Victoria Shoemaker, a literary agent, close friend and former neighbor of Howard’s.
Howard made some notable purchases in his lengthy career as a bookseller.
In the late 1990s, he bought the 18,000-volume collection of Carter Burden, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and a progressive New York politician and businessman. The size of the collection prompted Howard to install space-saving compact shelving, making Serendipity the only bookstore in the world to have such shelving.
In 1991, Howard was offered the archives of Thomas M. Jackson, an Oakland grocer who had served as secretary for the California chapter of the NAACP from 1910 and 1940. After Jackson died, in 1963, someone took his papers to the Berkeley dump. Someone else rescued them and asked Howard to help them find a proper home. Howard sold the papers to the Bancroft Library.
Later in that decade, someone found 946 letters exchanged between two Japanese-American teenagers who met at an internment camp in Utah. Tamaki Tsubokura and David Hisato Yamate were separated for a few years during the war, and they wrote to one another frequently. These letters were also dumped at the Berkeley landfill and later rescued. Howard brokered their sale to the University of Utah.
One indication of the reverence in which Howard was held by the rare-book community came every two years around the time of the Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco. Howard would throw a huge party at Serendipity Books the Wednesday before the fair. He would clear the books in his store out of the aisles and off of the tables, tent-over the parking lot, and have Poulet cater the meal. He would have a suckling pig, and the printer, Alistair Johnson, would print up the menu, said Dahm. The party was so popular that the store and tent were jammed.
The liquidation sale will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. almost every weekend through Dec. 15th. Check Here for schedule.
All books will be $5 on Nov. 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, and 17th. Then the price will drop to $3 each book on Nov. 21, 22, 23, and Dec. 5, 6, and 7. The prices drop to $1 on Dec. 12, 13, 14, and 15th.
Visit the Serendipity Books Liquidation sale Facebook page.
[Top]Rare book auction includes the white whale of first editions
Source: Melville House
by Julia Fleischaker
Swann Auction Galleries has listed an extremely rare first edition of Moby-Dick.
Now’s your chance to own the white whale of rare literature! A first edition copy of Moby-Dick: or, The Whale, including extremely rare white endpapers is up for auction at Swann Auction Galleries. Part of their 19th and 20th Century Literature Auction, the edition is expected to go for a mere $35,000-$50,000.
Stephen J. Gertz at BookTryst notes that these endpapers add “upwards of $20,000 to the value of a standard, first American edition, first issue copy with orange endpapers.” So what makes these endpapers so special? According to this collectibles website, “In 1853 a fire at Harpers - the book’s publisher - destroyed all but around 60 copies, making the edition extremely rare. This example is one of only two known that feature white endpapers, further enhancing its desirability.”
Herman Melville isn’t the only bold-faced named included in the auction. Paul Fraser Collectibles takes note of some of the other interesting items:
A signed first edition of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is also featured with an estimate of $18,000-25,000. It is inscribed: “For Jules and Joyce and also Joan with love John Steinbeck”.
It features the rare flying pig illustration that Steinbeck reserved for close friends. Jules Buck was a movie producer with whom Steinbeck worked on a screenplay that became Eli Kazan’s Viva Zapata.
The dust jacket is in excellent condition with virtually no rubbing or wear, and features the original price of $2.75.
William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is offered as a first edition, with the original cloth-backed patterned boards and dust jacket. A masterpiece of modernism, the book relates the story of the Compson family – formerly wealthy southern aristocrats who have fallen on hard times.
The edition has been expertly repaired on areas of the spine, panel and folds and features a small split to the lower front hinge. It is expected to bring $15,000-20,000.
Other books include an inscribed first edition and one of only 500 copies of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations ($6,000-$9,000), and a first edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter ($6,000-$9,000).
Setting your budget under a grand? There are plenty of options: first editions of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, an inscribed Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and In Cold Blood, signed by Truman Capote, are just some of the titles being estimated at under $1,000.
The auction starts on November 21, and Swann Galleries lets you bid live online, over email, or on the phone, so don’t forget!
From Swann’s description of Lot 197:
“ONLY FOUND ANOTHER ORPHAN” MELVILLE, HERMAN.Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. 12mo, original black cloth, boards slightly bowed, blind-stamped with heavy rule frame and publisher’s circular device at center of each cover, minor chipping to spine ends, short fray along front joint; white endpapers, double flyleaves at front and back, usual scattered light foxing, 6-page publisher’s advertisement at end, penciled ownership signature on front free endpaper; preserved in 1/4 morocco gilt-lettered drop-back cloth box. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851
Estimate $35,000 - 50,000
unsophisticated copy of the first american edition, first state binding, containing thirty-five passages and the Epilogue omitted from the English edition (published a month earlier). Melville himself famously described his book thus: ‘It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships’ cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.’
Julia Fleischaker is Melville House's director of publicity.
[Top]Allington Antiquarian Books, LLC
I just received the following email from Allington Books. Their updates are generally quite interesting. I thought you might want to take a look at their specials of the month. Enjoy!
"We have updated our Weekly Sale List. Items on the list normally change about once per week and typically are marked down by 20% to 60%.
This week, more than 50 items are discounted 70%. Please feel free to share this Sale List with your friends and fellow collectors.
Unless otherwise specifically stated, all books are first printings of first editions for the country of origin and, of course, are subject to prior sale as well as to being put on hold for a customer's consideration. Orders sent to an address in North Carolina will be charged the applicable sales tax.
The Discounts offered in the Sale List may not be used in combination with any other discounts.
Here is the link to this week's Sale List:
http://www.allingtonbooks.com/shop/allington/category/SALE%20LIST.html
(You also can locate the Sale List at any time under "Browse Categories" on our Home Page at www.allingtonbooks.com).
Payment is due at purchase. Items are returnable for a refund as long as we receive notice of the return within 3 days of Buyer's receipt of the item, and then receive the item in the same condition as delivered to Buyer within 15 days of its delivery to Buyer.
Photographs in addition to those on our site are available on request. (Additional photographs, including author signatures where present, are with the ABE listings for these books -- however, to obtain the Sale List Price, you must order at www.allingtonbooks.com.)
With Thanks and
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Allington Antiquarian Books, LLC
First-Edition, Signed 'Gatsby' Was Stolen From Him, Man Says
Source: Courthouse News Service
by: By REBEKAH KEARN
SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) - A book dealer is asking $750,000 for a signed first edition of "The Great Gatsby," which was stolen from a man's home, and whose character Tom Buchanan was "loosely modeled" on the man's father, the son claims in court.
William M. Hitchcock sued James Robert Cahill Rare Books, and Quintessential Rare LLC dba AbeBooks.com dba James Cahill Publishing/Rare Books, in Federal Court.
Hitchcock, of Houston, claims the book is a family heirloom and that Cahill has no right to sell it.
Hitchcock seeks "to recover a unique and valuable boo, to wit, a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic and critically acclaimed novel 'The Great Gatsby' autographed by the author and inscribed to Hitchcock's father, Thomas Hitchcock: 'For Tommy Hitchcock for keeps from his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald Los Angeles 1927."
Hitchcock says his father, who died fighting in World War II, "was the dominant American polo player of his generation. Fitzgerald loosely modeled the character of 'Tom Buchanan' in the novel 'The Great Gatsby' and the character of 'Tommy Barban' in ... 'Tender is the Night' on Thomas Hitchcock. Fitzgerald also autographed and inscribed a copy of 'Tender is the Night' to Thomas Hitchcock."
After Hitchcock's father died, the autographed copy of "Gatsby" passed to Hitchcock's mother, then to him when she died in 1997, the complaint states.
Hitchcock says he displayed the book in his house until 2005 or 2006, when "a person or persons unknown removed the book from Hitchcock's residence without his permission, authorization or knowledge."
He claims he realized the book was missing after he moved to a new house. Hitchcock says he looked for the book and talked to his friends about its disappearance, but never found it and "did not determine for certain that it was gone."
But in April 2012, Hitchcock says, a friend saw the book for sale on Cahill's website for $750,000.
Upon investigation, Hitchcock says, he found that Cahill had bought the book "at a Bonham's auction in Los Angeles in or about 2010 for about $61,000."
Hitchcock claims Cahill never bothered to find out who owned the book before he bought it. He claims Cahill did not receive "any documentation of the provenance or history of possession of the book or proof that it had left the possession of the Hitchcock family lawfully or with the Hitchcock family's consent."
Hitchcock says he filed an online crime report with the Houston Police Department on April 17. Then he had attorney Thomas Kline, with Andrews Kurth, send Cahill a letter demanding return of the book, to no avail.
When Cahill refused to cooperate, Hitchcock says, he "filled out a stolen art data sheet" with the FBI on April 26. He says the FBI investigated for almost a year, but closed its case in February this year without pressing charges.
Hitchcock then hired another lawyer and tried again to retrieve the book. He claims that on Feb. 28, attorney Terry Higham "contacted James Robert Cahill by email and telephone and renewed Hitchcock's demand for return of the book. Following the conversations occurring on March 1, 2013, Mr. Cahill again refused to return the book," the complaint states.
It continues: "During his telephone conversation with Higham, James Robert Cahill claimed that he had already transferred the book to a resident of the United Kingdom who intended to deface the book by cutting out the pages containing Fitzgerald's signature and inscription. Upon Higham's objection to the defacing of the book, Mr. Cahill indicated that he could prevent such defacement of the book, if he chose to do so."
Hitchcock says he is the rightful owner of the book, and he wants it back.
"Because the book, as inscribed to Hitchcock's father, is a unique work of literature of historical and personal significance, the harm to Hitchcock cannot be adequately remedied unless the book is returned to him, with damages for loss of use and enjoyment during the period of Cahill's detention of the book," the complaint states.
Hitchcock says he is afraid that Cahill or his alleged customer "will make good on Mr. Cahill's threat to deface the book by cutting out the pages containing F. Scott Fitzgerald's signature and the author's inscription to Hitchcock's father."
Hitchcock seeks a preliminary injunction preventing Cahill from selling or defacing the book, declaratory judgment that Hitchcock is the book's only rightful owner, wants Cahill ordered to return the book, and damages for replevin and conversion.
He is represented by Terry L. Higham with Barton, Klugman & Oetting of Los Angeles.
[Top]Anthropodermic Bibliopegy or Books Bound in Human Skin
This topic has interested me for quite some time. I find the practice strangely intriguing and gruesome at the same time. In fact this practice dates back to the 17 th century and there are a number of these strange in public (and probably private) collections as noted below. Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive article on the practice of binding books in human skin - also known as Anthropodermic Bibliopegy.
Please tell us if you have any experience or expertise in these books...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. Though extremely uncommon in modern times, the technique dates back to at least the 17th century. The practice is inextricably connected with the practice of tanning human skin, often done in certain circumstances after a corpse has been dissected.
Surviving historical examples of this technique include anatomy texts bound with the skin of dissected cadavers, volumes created as a bequest and bound with the skin of the testator (known as "autoanthropodermic bibliopegy"), and copies of judicial proceedings bound in the skin of the murderer convicted in those proceedings, such as in the case of John Horwood in 1821 and the Red Barn Murder in 1828.
The libraries of many Ivy League universities include one or more samples of anthropodermic bibliopegy. The rare book collection at the Harvard Law School Library holds a book allegedly bound in human skin, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae, a treatise on Spanish law, though testing on the binding has proven inconclusive. A faint inscription on the last page of the book states:
"The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma[1] on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace."
The John Hay Library's special books collection at Brown University contains three human-skin books, including a rare copy of De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Vesalius.
Some early copies of Dale Carnegie's Lincoln the Unknown were covered with jackets containing a patch of skin from an African American man, onto which the title had been embossed. A portion of the binding in the copy that is part of the collection of Temple University's Charles L. Blockson Collection was "taken from the skin of a Negro at a Baltimore Hospital and tanned by the Jewell Belting Company".
The National Library of Australia holds a book of 18th century poetry with the inscription "Bound in human skin" on the first page.
Another such book resides at the University of Georgia in the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Library.
Several anatomical volumes, including at least one belonging to and apparently prepared by the renowned anatomist Joseph Leidy (September 9, 1823 – April 30, 1891) are in the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. As of August 2012, these volumes and samples of human-skin leather were on public display.
There is also a tradition of certain volumes of erotica being bound in human skin. Examples reported include a copy of the Marquis de Sade's Justine et Juliette bound in tanned skin from female breasts. Other examples are known, with the feature of the intact human nipple on one or more of the boards of the book. One volume from very early in the 17th century is said to show the face of a priest who was put to death for his alledged part in the attempted assassination of a King.
