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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

rare books


gronksmil

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4 hours ago, other ranker said:

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

It's rather confusing that the 1936 privately printed edition , which is usually signed and dedicated , has printed inside-

'printed in 1917' . I notice that the two 1936 copies on ABE are listed as ' published by Hodder & Stoughton 1917 '.

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This is the Hodder 1917 Edition in its dust-jacket

OneYoungMan.jpg

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Left hand salute??

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Yes it does look a little odd, but I think he is pictured leaving for the Front, leaning out of a train carriage window, and so it could be wave goodbye?

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Oh yes, that looks possible.

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Today's rarity, courtesy of the latest Turner Donovan catalogue, is this account by Sir Frank Fox of his time at Haig's headquarters in Montreuil-sur-Mer during the War. Published by Philip Allan in 1920 it's a not uncommon book but this is the first I've ever come across in the jacket. Cyril Falls considered it a valuable account without actually awarding it any stars. Nice photos of the great and the good standing around. Interestingly at the back is an advert for J.B.Morton's ('Beachcomber') novel 'The Barber of Putney'. One of the finest novels to come out of the War & exceedingly rare, particularly the 1919 edition advertised here. It even gets a star from Falls!

1924497592_GHQGSO.jpg.5e124742f7f019b9e7c4ef71349021b8.jpg

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2 hours ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Today's rarity, courtesy of the latest Turner Donovan catalogue, is this account by Sir Frank Fox of his time at Haig's headquarters in Montreuil-sur-Mer during the War. Published by Philip Allan in 1920 it's a not uncommon book but this is the first I've ever come across in the jacket. Cyril Falls considered it a valuable account without actually awarding it any stars. Nice photos of the great and the good standing around. Interestingly at the back is an advert for J.B.Morton's ('Beachcomber') novel 'The Barber of Putney'. One of the finest novels to come out of the War & exceedingly rare, particularly the 1919 edition advertised here. It even gets a star from Falls!

 

Nice buy , i've never seen a copy in it's jacket before and I now realise that the red and blue bookmark in my copy is actually a piece of the jacket :wacko:

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On 02/11/2018 at 15:49, 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.

Building on the H.Q. Tanks picture, here's some that weren't fully visible or weren't in that picture.

 

 

MoreHamilton.jpg

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8 hours ago, dpolglaze said:

Building on the H.Q. Tanks picture, here's some that weren't fully visible or weren't in that picture.

 

 

 

Nice ! Thanks for posting , it's always good to see photos of other people's books.

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I wonder why the jackets on flying memoirs seem to have survived better than those on more earthbound volumes ? It can’t just be down to numbers sold - books by Sapper for instance, which sold in vastly greater numbers than these are extremely scarce in jackets whereas many of the John Hamiltons seem to turn up fairly regularly.

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DJC, I think the jackets of the John Hamilton books make the books. The artwork is fantastic. I would love to find an original Orton Stanley Bradshaw picture. I saw one sold at Dominic Winters for £600. I kick myself for not seeing it. Look it up, a fantastic picture of a Camel.

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4 hours ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

I wonder why the jackets on flying memoirs seem to have survived better than those on more earthbound volumes ? It can’t just be down to numbers sold - books by Sapper for instance, which sold in vastly greater numbers than these are extremely scarce in jackets whereas many of the John Hamiltons seem to turn up fairly regularly.

Interesting question , maybe those readers of the books on the air war were just more appreciative of the fantastic art work .

 

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12 hours ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

I wonder why the jackets on flying memoirs seem to have survived better than those on more earthbound volumes ? It can’t just be down to numbers sold - books by Sapper for instance, which sold in vastly greater numbers than these are extremely scarce in jackets whereas many of the John Hamiltons seem to turn up fairly regularly.

 

Some of the books' smaller runs might have actually led to a higher retention percentage of jackets, as many could have been purchased by specialists.

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10 hours ago, Black Maria said:

Interesting question , maybe those readers of the books on the air war were just more appreciative of the fantastic art work .

 

Possibly, but this is reportedly the era when dust jackets were routinely discarded by the bookseller at point of purchase. If you look at some of the covers on detective fiction from the 1930s there’s some fantastic art work most of which has largely vanished. Maybe, as dpolglaze suggests, there were sold in more specialist shops which didn’t follow the usual practice.

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2 hours ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Possibly, but this is reportedly the era when dust jackets were routinely discarded by the bookseller at point of purchase. If you look at some of the covers on detective fiction from the 1930s there’s some fantastic art work most of which has largely vanished. Maybe, as dpolglaze suggests, there were sold in more specialist shops which didn’t follow the usual practice.

I never realised the booksellers discarded the jackets*  , if only they knew what a difference it would make to the value of the book in the future !

Similar to when I was a kid and threw away all my Dinky car boxes :doh:

 

* knew it happened in in the early days when the jackets were plain and just designed to protect the book in transit but thought that by the thirties

it had stopped .

 

Edited by Black Maria
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5 hours ago, Black Maria said:

I never realised the booksellers discarded the jackets*  , if only they knew what a difference it would make to the value of the book in the future !

Similar to when I was a kid and threw away all my Dinky car boxes :doh:

 

* knew it happened in in the early days when the jackets were plain and just designed to protect the book in transit but thought that by the thirties

it had stopped .

 

I’ve read several times that jackets were discarded but I’ve always been slightly doubtful that it actually happened to any extent. After all by the end of the day booksellers would have been knee deep in discarded jackets! It seems to me more likely that publishers, knowing what was happening, would have just supplied a few copies in jackets for display purposes and leave the rest plain.

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Interesting points above. The old - original- view that DJs were there to protect the book from wear and tear tells the story of most  of their survival or non-survival. Of course, obvious candidates are children's books- for which the rule as to them retaining any value seems to be not to let them anywhere near  children.  When one sees the plain  printed ;paper wrappers  of many (especially non-fiction books- eg The first of Keynes General Theory), then a bookshop must have been a very dull place indeed. To me, a dustwrapper of the collectable variety raises questions about the whole book, what the target market was and what the production values (and price) were overall.  Thus, the readily collectable travel books of the latter part of the Nineteenth Century have generous production values-proper cloth, illustrated and a  visual treat.  By the Great War, direct printing on to  cloth had developed so well that many books on the war have very good images printed on. But a good dustwrapper can often mark a cheaply produced book -  either board instead  of cloth-and unillustrated or colour-blocked into the bargain.

     I do not know the Hamilton air books well enough to comment but I think the "collectability" of the wrappers is unlikely (Why are there not known collections of them=-or indeed,of dustwrappers of the Great War by themselves generally?). Display copies?  Very unlikely.  The run-on costs of producing coloured  illustrated wrappers once you have set up the plates is so negligible that it is very,very unlikely. If they were done to attract the magpie customers by bright illustrations, then only to have a few is most unlikely.

   I suspect that  the survival of the Hamilton wrappers depends on 2 factors- a)  The quality of the paper used   and b)  The production values of the underlying book- a book that falls apart easily is unlikely to have a pristine wrapper.

Just a thought:wub:

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  • 4 weeks later...

I should imagine this is quite a rare book . ' Alexander Noel Hepburne-Scott 1892-1915 letters to his mother and a few others'

published for private circulation in 1919 . He was the second son of Hon W,G Hepburne-Scott and went to France in September

1914 as a private in the London Scottish , invalided home in January 1915 he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the

Scots Guards Special Reserve in March 1915 . He went back to France in April 1915 and joined the 2nd battalion , he was

killed at Festubert  on May 16th , his body was never found. It has card covers , frontispiece and five photographs .

A.N.S.jpeg

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Very nice, John, and not one I’ve come across before. It doesn’t appear to be in Tom’s bibliography either.

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19 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

Very nice, John, and not one I’ve come across before. It doesn’t appear to be in Tom’s bibliography either.

That's interesting Alan , I was wondering if it was in his book . I couldn't find any mention of the book on-line , although

the I.W.M have a photo of him on their site and he is mentioned on this forum . I expect that having card covers has

meant that not many copies have survived .

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An interesting copy of Fawcett & Hooper’s ‘The Fighting at Jutland’ arrived today. Published in 1920/21, three copies were specially bound. One in blue Morocco was presented to George V and is still in the Royal Collection. The other two were bound in vellum and given to the authors. This is Fawcett’s copy. He fought at Jutland aboard the destroyer HMS Lydiard. Still an essential account.

A1445100-2F8A-4753-83DC-C0522D845F88.jpeg.5b6607e1b1fe2b6d195de8f6d185b415.jpegE47417EB-0483-49F2-97FF-13777886C369.jpeg.cce0c8151f25644cf7b302ce66d172ac.jpeg

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Wow that is very special. I have a copy of that first printing, but sadly not in vellum. I was in contact with one of the family a couple of years back, a grandson of his brother Richard Fawcett MC, who lost an arm in Thiepval Wood on 1/7/1916 as a captain in the 1/6 West Yorks. One brother was killed serving in each of the world wars, but Richard, and their sister who served as a VAD in Egypt also  survived. Harold returned to the navy in WW2 and was awarded an OBE. His papers are to be found in Churchill College Cambridge. The family were wool merchants in Bradford and at some stage owned a mill.

 

Keith

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That's wonderful! Am jealous....

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