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Confessions Of A Bibliophile

Nick Bourne tells the tale of his love of books.

By Nick Bourne

20 Sep 2011, 14:00

Ever since I can remember, I have been a bibliophile.  I was a voracious reader and books of all kinds were never in short supply when I was young.   The section of the local library, behind one of the book shelves was often sequestrated by me and in my various moods, no doubt fired by my overactive imagination fuelled by the latest novel I was imbibing, it became in turn my secret locale in a spy milieu, my hideout from buccaneers, and my headquarters for military manoeuvres.  Whatever it was for the moment in my imagination, my library never ceased being my favourite haunt.  The books transported me into the realms of adventure, sci-fiction, fantasy, thrillers and so for many hours, to my parents’ relief, kept me out of mischief, at minimal expense to them.  Books were initially my nanny, then my playmates and in time, became constant companions.

What started as a harmless flirtation with merely borrowing books from libraries, progressed to a more serious dalliance when with my first pocket money, I decided to spend most of it on a book.  From then on there was no turning back.  Books purchased could be loaned many times to different friends for other books, which was most satisfactory.  Less satisfactory was original books returned in a shoddy state or not returned at all.  Neither a borrower nor a lender be, and my infatuation with books, progressed quite naturally over a period of time, to collecting modern first editions.  I am not a diehard collector but what prompted me to do so was the interest of Kenneth Baker (now Lord Baker) who is an avid bibliophile when I was a student in London studying for the Bar exams.  I lived in St Marylebone and Kenneth Baker was my local MP.  He was and is a man of great judgement with a broad range of interests – what Denis Healey terms ‘Hinterland’.  One of these interests was in collecting modern first editions as I discovered when I visited the Baker home when Kenneth and Mary Baker were entertaining and looking back this could have triggered my collecting instincts.   

It is a good excuse, first and foremost, to go into bookshops to hunt down additions to one’s collection.  It is usual for a collector to collect just a few authors, or perhaps a particular range of books such as cricket books as there are millions and millions of books.  The modest collector therefore tends to specialise in one or more genres or sub-genres of literature that they are interested in.  I elected early on to collect Agatha Christie (a fairly common collection), Ian Fleming, Neville Shute and Graham Greene.  I have had some successes though I haven’t yet found a first edition of ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’.  This was Agatha Christie’s first novel and in good condition in a dust jacket would be worth some £15,000 - £20,000.  Nor have I located a first edition of ‘Casino Royale’ which is the most valuable of the Bond books by Ian Fleming.  This too would be worth several thousand pounds. The price depends on the comparative rarity of the first edition, demand for the book, the number of copies available and of course on the fame of the author.  The price could also depend on the author’s status - dead authors are worth more!   

Intact dust jackets are also all important, as is the condition of the book.  Without the jackets, first editions are worth significantly less than with them.

I found an invaluable aid over the years to be the Book and Magazine Collector magazine.  This ran from 1984 but ceased publication in 2010.  I recently looked up the first issue of the Book and Magazine Collector.  It features items on the James Bond books, Edwardian Children’s books, collecting Penguins and books on Victorian wars.  By contrast the last issue featured the top 50 funniest books of all time, the ghost stories of EF Benson, the books of David Mitchell (the author of Cloud Atlas, of course, not the comedian) and Sexton Blake.  I am afraid that the magazine fell victim to the strength of the internet which is the main medium now for sale and purchase of first editions.

Almost invariably it is the first book by an author that is the rarest.  Agatha Christie was not a household name when she published ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’, although it would have been quite clear early on that she would be one.   With the passage of time, many of those first editions would have disappeared from view and almost certainly, virtually all of the dust jackets.

The same is true, of course, of more modern authors.  JK Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ in its first edition is the book to get.  The trick, of course, is to discover the author that is going to make it big early on.   Your guess would of course, be as good as mine!

A lot of the fun is the fun of the chase; for the hobbyist (as opposed to the diehard collector), there is no paper trail (pardon the pun) and what one needs is just a modicum of time to while away, a huge dose of luck of being in the correct place at the correct time and an observant eye.  Small book shops and some charity shops can disgorge some treasures and searching for that elusive title and finding it unexpectedly in a book shop in a small country town is a gold standard moment.  I recently acquired a first edition of Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Blind Assassin’ in Faversham purely by chance – going for a song.  For the serious collector, antique or specialist book shops and the internet are the harbours of the great paper chase, and of course, the universal object to make things happen, money - which depending on the title, could require an obscene amount.  Only the wealthiest can pursue the great rarities such as Shakespeare’s First Folio which is most valuable.

Space on my book shelves now is at a premium and I am in danger of becoming a bibliomaniac but I am now being selective in what I acquire.  When I used to attend constituency events or hold surgeries in Hay-on-Wye there was also a massive danger that the car would come back from Hay stuffed to the gunnels with books, some but not all of which would be first editions.  The danger remains whenever I go to Hay.

Book scouting and collecting is a rewarding and enjoyable hobby and backed up with some research on the authors that one is collecting, is an extremely interesting pastime too.