Keith, who edits these pages, has an ebullient and hospitable manner and a habit, among others, of stopping you as you chatter to pick up on some transitory idea and say: “You could write a column about that.” Before you have time to react, he says, briskly, “800 words” and you’re engaged in a commission, if not a fee.
A couple of months ago, off my guard, I was rambling about people who collect first editions of books. Or who gather ones the author has signed. “What’s the point?” I muttered. Write about it, he said.
Now in my view there are several reasons not to want a first edition: among them weight, condition and accuracy.
Weight, because they are inevitably hardbacks. My biceps have largely expanded to their impressive girth partly because of their development as I’ve heaved around vast hardback editions of Wolf Hall, The Man Without Qualities and Oswald’s Tale to name a few. It’s the equivalent of slipping the Elgin marbles into your briefcase or transporting a couple of Henry Moores in your Sainsbury’s bag.
Then there’s condition. First editions are, by definition, the oldest copy of a book you can possibly uncover. What else do you buy with the proviso that it is the oldest on the market? Would you approach a motor car, two pounds of scrag end of lamb or a banana with this attitude? Besides, if you’re going to find typos and literals in the copy, where will they be most likely to flourish? In the first edition, of course. They’ll be corrected and revised in future ones.
“So you don’t have first editions?” Keith enquires.
But I do. Hundreds of them. I’ve misspent thousands of pounds and years of my life prowling second hand book and charity shops on their trail. And I have no idea why. That’s why it’s taken me a while to finally finish this article.
In truth, I have a number of oddities when it comes to books. For one thing, I sniff them. Every now and again I’ll check there’s no one around, pull a volume off a shelf, open it and, burying my nose near the spine, inhale deeply.
Even more bizarre, I’ve been known to make first editions. Years ago I suffered from a Dickens obsession and took to buying up incomplete first editions (there are plenty around lacking a few illustrations or the odd page) and waiting until I’d amassed a whole edition so I could have them re-bound into a single complete volume. And I’ve bought the original parts (they were first sold in
monthly issues, a chapter at a time) often in such a fragile state that they’re impossible to handle, so that reading them is utterly out of the question.
But there’s a chap I know in Manchester who is even worse than me. He takes paperbacks he likes and has them leather bound so they look pretty on his shelves. This makes me seem pretty normal. In fact, I worry about him. But he can’t be alone, or publishers wouldn’t bother putting that obscure message in the front of books saying they are sold “subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.” I don’t know exactly what these conditions imply, but I’ve certainly infringed them.
Then there are signed books. Why would a person – me, for example – want the author’s signature on the title page? There is no reason. But I do. And it’s not just the activity of the careful connoisseur.
I remember going to Cecil Sharp House to hear Umberto Eco speak and at the end he was deluged by fellow enthusiasts rushing to the front waving felt-tip pens and gleaming hardbacks. But there were also people thrusting tatty paperbacks that Oxfam wouldn’t take to be inscribed with an ornate flourish from the chubby Piedmontese.
Before I read a book, I take off its dust jacket so that when I’ve read it I can replace the jacket so it looks pristine on my shelf. There are huge and impractical editions, like Charles Knight’s Imperial Edition of the Works of Shakspere. I found that in a poor state and had it rebound. When he saw it, my cousin Peter, who’s a printer and therefore a proofer, nearly had a heart attack. “They’ve spelled his ruddy name wrong!” As an object, it’s fine, but as a book it’s a disaster. I risk a hernia every time I lever it off the shelf and if I put in on my knee I get terrible cramp and have to wait for assistance before I can move out of my chair.
Also, many first editions are not particular things of beauty, even the ones I think have value far beyond price. I remember the day, in an Amnesty International book shop in Camden, I came across the first English translation of Proust. All 11 volumes. I became a dithering wreck, dropping the books I’d been intending to buy and snatching these unprepossessing green-backed books to me like an overzealous parent on firework night. Although my mouth was dry with fear, I suspect I drooled. I snapped at my companion to go and fetch money – that was the exact cry, “Fetch money!” – as I clung to my bounty like a Newgate inmate.
I’ve even got a letter written by Marcel Proust, for which I paid more than I did for my last car. This finally tested the patience of my off-spring. “You’ve paid a year’s tuition fees for used stationery?”
I had almost abandoned my search for the source of my book problem, when my lifelong literary chum Di told me the answer. “There is no reason,” she said. “You just like them.” She considered further. “Yes, it is unreasonable. But then again, it’s not the most unreasonable thing about you.”
I didn’t argue. That’s the answer. It’s unreasonable. And so am I.
