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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

rare books


gronksmil

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      As it is local to me, I picked up a copy in a local junkshop nigh-on 40 years back.   It's frontispiece  map is worthy of  putting up on the Forum.  Forget  London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, etc-   If I remember correctly (book is in store)..... a map of Europe and the Near East  with only 2 places marked on it........Yes, you've guessed.

Book probably won’t arrive until later in the week but I’ll put the map up then unless someone else does.

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1 minute ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Book probably won’t arrive until later in the week but I’ll put the map up then unless someone else does.

 

    A hundred years on, the map is unintentionally funny.  ( I think I may have seen your DW copy at a bookfair recently??)  Of course, one cannot resist the joke- what is the difference between Romford and Beirut? One is  war-ravaged, with obvious signs of sustained violence to the architecture and infrastructure and a long history of casual violence. The other is in Lebanon :wub:

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I was in Beirut a few years ago. Strange place.

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1 hour ago, seaJane said:

I was in Beirut a few years ago. Strange place.

I was in Romford a few years ago.  Hmmm ...

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Reminds me of that scene in Morse where his boss says to Him “It’s all right for you, matey, sunning yourself in Beirut”, to which Morse replies, despairingly “It was  Bayreuth, Sir” (for the Wagner).

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 :D

My grandad lived in Romford once he got out of Surrey.

1918-1919 RAF Officer Cadet,

1920-1939 bike shop proprietor,

1939-1945 RASC/REME,

1946-1960 Ford Dagenham.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just read 'Pillbox 17', by Broger 1930 edn. It had a unexpected turn in it! Followed up with 'The Price Of Victory', by Strange 1930edn which I found unputdownable. Got 'Men Who March Away' by Henry Andover 1934 edn to follow, which I know nothing about yet. All hard to find treasures I think.

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  • 2 months later...

Here's a new topic for discussion. This is aimed at those avid Great War book collectors, You know who you are! My own collection has taken a life of its own and is strewn across several bookcases. The question is how do you organise your books? By colour, by campaign, alphabetically by author or title of book, or favourites at the top? Please help me find my books on the shelf!

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2 hours ago, other ranker said:

Here's a new topic for discussion. This is aimed at those avid Great War book collectors, You know who you are! My own collection has taken a life of its own and is strewn across several bookcases. The question is how do you organise your books? By colour, by campaign, alphabetically by author or title of book, or favourites at the top? Please help me find my books on the shelf!

To be honest I have the same trouble . I keep all my favourite books together in two book cases , these mostly all have their

jackets and are mostly pre WW2 and Western Front . With the others i keep the older books together and sort them into groups

( ie Gallipoli , P.O.W , R.F.C , German , Nurse ) where possible. With the newer ones i separate them by age , keeping the 1960s

and 70s books separate from the later ones and also keep all my paperbacks together . I also have all the non-memoir WW1 books

separate ( not many of these !)  . At the end of the day , although i think i know where most of my books are, i can still spend ages

trying to find a book that I've moved .

 

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I agree with Black Maria. I try to keep the great majority of them in alphabetical order by author. The problem with that is fixed height shelves which means the taller ones have to go elsewhere. I also have separate cases of poetry, RFC, Nursing, POWs, etc. I keep a database as well. None of which makes it any easier to find a book or prevent me from buying the same book twice! It could be that I have too many books. There are a dozen Ikea Billy bookcases all fitted with extra shelves, books stacked on the tops and on the floor and in some cases double stacked.

The only solution is to win the lottery, buy a larger house and employ a librarian (preferably not one who throws all the books away).

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3 hours ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

 None of which makes it any easier to find a book or prevent me from buying the same book twice! It could be that I have too many books.

I thought of you the other day when a nursing book came up on e-bay and I was going to put a bid in , then checked my books and

thought I had already got it . I hadn't it was just a similar title , but it did make me think for a second that I had too many books , but

then I thought .. Nah ! 

 

 

 

 

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As I only have so much space, I try and limit myself to the important books or the least common. I am constantly upgrading my collection. I think I have replaced Old Soldiers Never Die about five times now. Got a nice one with dustwrapper currently, but not 1st, so its place is still a bit dodgy!

Like you mentioned I have a glazed bookcase in our lounge with the my dust jacketed prides of joy. The next purchase is another bookcase like this one to further the enhance the collection. I don't think it will go in the lounge though, wife not too keen on that!

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I think this a first edition copy. 

Red Baron (2).jpeg

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1 hour ago, other ranker said:

As I only have so much space, I try and limit myself to the important books or the least common. I am constantly upgrading my collection. I think I have replaced Old Soldiers Never Die about five times now. Got a nice one with dustwrapper currently, but not 1st, so its place is still a bit dodgy!

Like you mentioned I have a glazed bookcase in our lounge with the my dust jacketed prides of joy. The next purchase is another bookcase like this one to further the enhance the collection. I don't think it will go in the lounge though, wife not too keen on that!

 

   You are still an innocent at the constrained end of obsession. The idea of limiting one's library to choice items in one bookcase- which then forces choices of condition, edition,etc- dates from -usually-the Nineteenth Century collector (and pioneer of collecting first editions), Richard Monckton Milnes. Alas, it does tend to lead, like an infectious disease or the activities of a serial killer, to more and more and more. Wives can be useful (if annoying) in  acting as self-appointed guardians of restraint (The synonym for this is "nagging"). But,as a bookseller, when a customer asks you to post something "care of" a newsagent in a neighbouring country, then matters have reached "Men in White Coats" stage:wub:

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On 02/11/2018 at 17:12, Dust Jacket Collector said:

I agree with Black Maria. I try to keep the great majority of them in alphabetical order by author. The problem with that is fixed height shelves which means the taller ones have to go elsewhere. I also have separate cases of poetry, RFC, Nursing, POWs, etc. I keep a database as well. None of which makes it any easier to find a book or prevent me from buying the same book twice! It could be that I have too many books. There are a dozen Ikea Billy bookcases all fitted with extra shelves, books stacked on the tops and on the floor and in some cases double stacked.

The only solution is to win the lottery, buy a larger house and employ a librarian (preferably not one who throws all the books away).

 

On 02/11/2018 at 08:24, Black Maria said:

To be honest I have the same trouble . I keep all my favourite books together in two book cases , these mostly all have their

jackets and are mostly pre WW2 and Western Front . With the others i keep the older books together and sort them into groups

( ie Gallipoli , P.O.W , R.F.C , German , Nurse ) where possible. With the newer ones i separate them by age , keeping the 1960s

and 70s books separate from the later ones and also keep all my paperbacks together . I also have all the non-memoir WW1 books

separate ( not many of these !)  . At the end of the day , although i think i know where most of my books are, i can still spend ages

trying to find a book that I've moved .

 

 

On 02/11/2018 at 05:19, other ranker said:

Here's a new topic for discussion. This is aimed at those avid Great War book collectors, You know who you are! My own collection has taken a life of its own and is strewn across several bookcases. The question is how do you organise your books? By colour, by campaign, alphabetically by author or title of book, or favourites at the top? Please help me find my books on the shelf!

 

As all of mine are on WWI Aviation, they are broken down to categories and shelved accordingly. Within category, generally alphabetic but by different measures - airplanes by type of plane; memoirs/letters by subject of the memoir, broken further to country of origin of subject; technical, general, fiction, and minor categories generally by author; pamphlets and small items in old file cabinet drawers also by subject. Library spans two floors, and a number of the shelves are double deep with two rows of books, so a spreadsheet is necessary. Spreadsheet is updated (most of the time) with each purchase, and helps (also most of the time) with limiting purchases of second (and third) copies of books. Further, thanks to help from a sister who is a librarian and loves organizing, the spreadsheet includes a shelf map indicating on which shelf I will find each book, which helps for oversized books, and books I know I have, but can't remember where.

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dpolglaze, that sounds an amazing set up. I am currently collecting the John Hamilton aviation books of the thirties with dustwrappers. Could you put a picture of a shelf full of them up to inspire me? I think the art work is fantastic.

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I’m definitely going to start cutting down which is why I’ve only bought 12 books in the last week & only 9 of them were WW1. I even went to the Chelsea book fair yesterday & didn’t buy a thing. ( Forgot the 2 I just ordered from N & M but they were very cheap!).

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8 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

I’m definitely going to start cutting down which is why I’ve only bought 12 books in the last week & only 9 of them were WW1. I even went to the Chelsea book fair yesterday & didn’t buy a thing. ( Forgot the 2 I just ordered from N & M but they were very cheap!).

I admire your restraint :whistle:, I've been trying to cut back on the book buying too. Over the last three months I've only bought one expensive

pre-ww2 memoir and five newer ones . Probably easier for me though as I just stick to the W.F and Gallipoli and don't generally buy memorial

volumes ( too expensive ). I also don't buy Naval or A.E.F memoirs , poetry and fiction and try and stick to my wants list . On the down side I

do collect post WW2 and new memoirs and there has been a glut of those in recent years . I am quite choosy over which ones of those I buy,

generally sticking to hardbacks and only buy them if I'm fairly sure they most of the contents is by the soldier and not the compiler / editor .

 

 

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, other ranker said:

dpolglaze, that sounds an amazing set up. I am currently collecting the John Hamilton aviation books of the thirties with dustwrappers. Could you put a picture of a shelf full of them up to inspire me? I think the art work is fantastic.

 Remember this one ?-H.Q Tanks posted it on the favourite dust jacket thread a while back .

aviation.jpg

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This book covers the two topics of rare books and another debate that is active on the books thread about libraries getting shot

of rare WW1 books . I hadn't heard of it until a copy appeared on e-bay , missed out on that but picked up this near fine ( apart

from the odd stamp ) x-lib copy for 1p +p&p on Amazon . Only about 50pp out of 195pp covers his WW1 service but what I found

interesting was that he was a Royal Artillery fitter , I can't think of another memoir that covers this role . it was printed in 1974 and

published by Stockwell which probably explains why it's rare ( poor x-lib copy on Amazon for £16 )

pillar to post forum.jpeg

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Black Maria, I have been looking for that picture for ages. I couldn't remember where I saw it. Fantastic!

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CB06445E-E036-4E24-9A3D-FF7A49CACA78.jpeg.cc996aecaac64cb6663be92ff08186ce.jpeg

a rare one that came my way recently. Published by a small publisher, Arrowsmith, in 1929, it’s the diary of an American in the foreign legion who fought with the 170th Infantry at Verdun.

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scan0001.jpg.331eb25798c649c2fbe858e904631148.jpgHow about this one then? A rather grubby copy of 'One Young Man', the Hodder and Stoughton true first edition from 1917.

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