A sharp-eyed booklover has sold an 1848 first edition of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte for euro 8,000 (around $11,400) after buying it for euro 3 (about $4) in a flea market, reports the Irish Independent. The news story does not reveal the person who sold it at the flea market.
For Christmas, I was given the trade edition of Greatest of All Time – Taschen’s tribute to Muhammad Ali, which is also known as GOAT to people in the know. Before Taschen printed this edition in 2010, the original editions were way out of the price range of ordinary folks. It’s a massive book, as the video shows, and is packed with wonderful photography and essays about Ali’s career in and out of the boxing ring. I’m still working my way through the essays and I’ve had it two and a half months now.
There is some outstanding photography from people like Howard Bingham and Neil Leifer. Before opening this book, I’d never seen colour photography of Ali’s Sonny Liston bouts. There are some amazing pictures of Ali early in his career and a great image of him mugging with The Beatles. I was expecting to see the photos but the essays are also invaluable and originate from many sources across three decades.
Prices start at under $100 plus shipping for this trade edition. That’s significantly cheaper than the original editions from 2004 that cost thousands but then again they were limited editions signed by Ali.
It’s always fascinating to trawl through the signed books that are available on AbeBooks. We found a wide selection of books signed by famous pop stars, rock stars, and country singers too. Our list ranges from Neil Young to three members of the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton, Sting (his autobiography, Broken Music, is pictured right) Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. I love the title of Davey Jones’ autobiography – They Made a Monkee Out of Me.
I’ve read Chronicles by Bob Dylan and it’s not a bad book at all. Not sure I’d go for the Donny Osmond book myself…See the list.
February was a bumper month with several books standing out on our list of most expensive sales. A first edition of The Camels Are Coming by W.E. Johns, the first Biggles’ novel from 1932, was sold for $17,754 (almost £11,000). The Biggles series of aeronautical adventures spanned nearly 100 novels and features many different phases in the career of British flying ace John Bigglesworth (aka Biggles). The books go from his early days growing up in India, to fighting in World Wars I and II, and through to the Cold War era. First editions of The Camels Are Coming are scarce.
Of course, the ‘Camels’ are Sopwith Camels – the British World War I single-seat fighter plane that helped to revolutionize aerial warfare.
It’s also fascinating to see the continued interest A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. An unread copy of the first edition, first printing, of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel sold for $7,500. It was published in 1980 – only 7,500 copies of this printing were produced. As so often before, there was also a copy of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger on the list.
See the most expensive sales for February.
January’s list of most expensive sales includes a lot of classic authors – Joseph Conrad, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Faulkner and Anthony Trollope to name a few – as well as some more modern and obscure items. Topping the list was a 24-volume limited, numbered edition set of The Works of Joseph Conrad signed by the same.
We were delighted to note that our recent Cosway Bindings feature garnered some attention. The books are selling, and our number two spot for January went to the Cosway binding edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic tale of race and prejudice, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This edition was bound by the Chelsea Bindery and sold for $12,302.
One of the more modern entries on the list was a complete deluxe set of all seven Harry Potter novels which fetched $11,791. While the deluxe editions are not generally the most highly sought after in the world of collectible Harry Potter, this set was also inscribed by J.K. Rowling, sending the value much higher.
Other items of interest included a 1926, first edition copy of William Faulkner’s first novel, a 32-part weekly serialized novel by Anthony Trollope, and a five-volume set of books documenting the planning and construction of a railway route that never came to be.
