Between the Covers Rare Books of Merchantville, New Jersey, have another copy of one of the items featured in the Neville sale report – a first issue of The Sun Also Rises. There is no Hemingway inscription in this one but the jacket shows only a few nicks and it is available for only $125,000! Another US firm specialising in modern literature is Royal Books of Baltimore, whose stock will also include Hemingway firsts, as well as a signed and jacketed copy of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, priced at $7500.
Offered by Jonkers Rare Books is one of only a dozen copies of Poems by W.H. Auden that were privately printed on Stephen Spender’s own press in 1928. Inscribed by Auden to Cecil Day Lewis, this rarity is priced at £45,000, while an 1887 first of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Memories and Portraits that is inscribed to Andrew Lang is offered at £7500.
Described as a “good tight copy in somewhat dusty, rubbed and marked but original binding” and inscribed to his brother Thornley, a copy of Bram Stoker’s first novel, Under the Sunset of 1882, is offered by Nigel Williams of London at £7500.
Antiquarian Book Fair – something for all, priced at £50 and up...
The ABA’s annual Antiquarian Book Fair, which this year will be opened by the writer Frederick Forsyth, will run from June 3-6 at Olympia. Illustrated and/or very briefly described here are half a dozen items promised by dealers from Britain and the USA.