Jump to content
Free downloads from TNA ×
The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Rarest book?


Audax

Recommended Posts

Naval operations I believe

Der Krieg in der Ostee Volume 3 is the one that covers this, was published in 1964. What was the authors name please because the Americans became obsessed with these operations right after the war ? Especially the US marines, who even did battlefield tours between the wars! The reasons the German source documents survive is because the American at Postdam copied them all, and these where re copied and put in the Bundesarchiv after WW2.

It might be a translation of an early draft, fascinating!

I always find the first trick to finding a book is to know the title, then its just time and money, hence I have many bibliographies!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm constantly amazed by how many volumes of memoirs have been published, have so far eluded me & about which I've never even heard. I thought I'd take a look at Lengel's bibliography of WW1 Memories to see what I'm missing. Limiting it to pre-WW2 & only having reached C so far, these are all new to me & seem to be unavailable anywhere, so, Rare, at least.

H. M. Adams - A War Diary 1916-1918. Pub. 1922

Albert Barker - Memories of Macedonia

George Barker - Agony's Anguish. 1931

William Brown - Recollections of Gallipoli. 1941

Arthur Butler - Plain Impressions. 1919

Jeremiah Colman - Reminiscences of the Great War. 1940

E. Cooke - With the Guns East & West. 1923

Feel free to point me in the direction of any of these. On to the rest of the alphabet.......

I have heard of No's 5 & 7, Plain Impressions is in a T.D catalogue in 2003 priced at £25 , he couldn't have realised how rare it was. I think I have seen a copy

of the other for sale sometime or other but it wasn't cheap if I recall.

P.S just realised I have No 4, I must have too many books!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have Plain Impressions somewhere, and also With the guns east and west

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few more to muse on. Sadly, like blackmaria, having drawn up this list of books I've never encountered, I saw 2 of them on the shelf, one of which I only bought a few months ago (do any fellow members have a simple method of carrying a list of your books around with you?).

So up to 'H' I've found, or rather not found :-

Jane Dare - Letters from the forgotten army. 1920

Experiences of a War Baby. Pub. Gieves 1920

Henry Fyfe - Making of an Optimist. 1921

Henry Gervis - Arms & the Doctor. 1920

Herbert Graham - Life of a Tunnelling Company. 1927

Charles Head - No Great Shakes. 1943

J. A. Hill - The Front Line & Beyond it. 1927

John Hunter - Hell at Ypres. 1934

Link to comment
Share on other sites

arms and the doctor yes

life of a tunnelling company I think

Hell at Ypres yes {printed in Texas] on poor paper was looking at it this am!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few more to muse on. Sadly, like blackmaria, having drawn up this list of books I've never encountered, I saw 2 of them on the shelf, one of which I only bought a few months ago (do any fellow members have a simple method of carrying a list of your books around with you?).

So up to 'H' I've found, or rather not found :-

Jane Dare - Letters from the forgotten army. 1920

Experiences of a War Baby. Pub. Gieves 1920

Henry Fyfe - Making of an Optimist. 1921

Henry Gervis - Arms & the Doctor. 1920

Herbert Graham - Life of a Tunnelling Company. 1927

Charles Head - No Great Shakes. 1943

J. A. Hill - The Front Line & Beyond it. 1927

John Hunter - Hell at Ypres. 1934

I have No's 6 & 7 , am aware of No 5 but like 'One Mole Rampant ' I assume it's ultra rare. I think what threw me with the Gallipoli book was that the author's full name was

William Sorley Brown or W. Sorley Brown as appears on the front of the book. It's a while since I read 'No Great Shakes' , not a huge amount about the Great War but much on

pre-war soldiering and post-war Ireland , the author also wrote 'A Glance at Gallipoli'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Barkalot & BM - maybe we are the only collectors out there after all! I'm hoping the Centenary will bring a lot more rare books to light. I know Tom is planning a few specialist catalogues & I'm sure the major auction houses are gathering things together.

I was working on the next part of the list but the more I search the more I find and it's getting rather expensive. This god awful weather is causing some damp problems here and I should be keeping some money back to cover it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So are these books all Unobtainable, Very Rare, or Rare. I suspect once you know about them just Rare.

I can think of very few Unobtainable, I have 1 GW one ,and I got my first GW OH in 1979!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So are these books all Unobtainable, Very Rare, or Rare. I suspect once you know about them just Rare.

I can think of very few Unobtainable, I have 1 GW one ,and I got my first GW OH in 1979!

Impossible to say as I only began looking for them today. For all I know there may have been several available until recently. I think you need to have been looking for a particular book for years before you can judge how rare it might be. I'm afraid my capacity to recall what I saw in a catalogue long ago is not what it was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have saved some old book catalougues mainly Maggs from the early 1980's. Re reading them shows you books you have missed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My biggest regret? not buying a handwritten diary of the rifle brigade in india during the 1840`s 1850`s, it also came with a photograph album of the battlefields in Spain of the Napoleonic wars {taken in the 1880`s} and a 1st edition of Random shots of a rifleman i was invited to make any sort of an offer!! this was about 20 years ago and i still think about it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Der Krieg in der Ostee Volume 3 is the one that covers this, was published in 1964. What was the authors name please because the Americans became obsessed with these operations right after the war ? Especially the US marines, who even did battlefield tours between the wars! The reasons the German source documents survive is because the American at Postdam copied them all, and these where re copied and put in the Bundesarchiv after WW2.

It might be a translation of an early draft, fascinating!

I always find the first trick to finding a book is to know the title, then its just time and money, hence I have many bibliographies!

"THE ARMY AND NAVY DURING THE CONQUEST OF THE BALTIC ISLANDS OCTOBER 1917"BERLIN 1931 BY Lieutenant general von Tschischwitz {chief of staff expeditionary force}translated 1933
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My biggest regret? not buying a handwritten diary of the rifle brigade in india during the 1840`s 1850`s, it also came with a photograph album of the battlefields in Spain of the Napoleonic wars {taken in the 1880`s} and a 1st edition of Random shots of a rifleman i was invited to make any sort of an offer!! this was about 20 years ago and i still think about it!

Biggest regret - too many to mention really. A jacketed copy of Bucher's "In the Line" in an old Marrin catalogue or a similar Wilfred Owen's Poems for £200 in an old Rota catalogue - now £10,000. Not really a regret, as it was too expensive, but Peter Jolliffe once had a copy of Sassoon's 'Old Huntsman' simply inscribed 'RG (Robert Graves) from SS'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More missed than regrets Peter De Lotz's mid 80's, Occupation of the Rhineland £75, Got most of what I was after, and more than I or one person should have ever wished.

Will study your bibliographic details, thanks barkalotlodly, here's a link that is very interesting about it. http://casemethodusmc.blogspot.co.uk/

I am very lucky I got what could have become my biggest regret Collingwoods copy of Signals and Fighting Instructions 1799 with annotations by Nelson. I had always wanted Trafalgar and Nelson Memorabilia but that!!!! it was John Terraines favorite book, he even persuaded me to bring it to the NAM when Corelli Barnet presented his new book, "Engage the Enemy More Closely" (Signal 16 from the 1799 signl book) , John nonchalantly showed him Signal 16 and Signal 501 apologising that it was not Nelson's, only Collingwoods but "501 is probably the original done by Nelson's Secretary", Corelli was in shock for days! . And some of my India Mutiny stuff is pretty special.

Has anyone ever seen the Official History : Eastern Siberia to go with the Evacuation of Northern Russian, 1920 HMSO?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow Martin, can't beat that.

As to the Siberian & Russian volumes, I'm still struggling to find the more regular members of the series. Fortunately I do have the Rhineland volume courtesy of another contributor to this thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of my mates regrets was in a collectors shop letting me look through the naval stuff why he went for local postcards , on the top was the orginal copy ships log for HMS Pearl during the Indian Mutiny ,£12, bloke at the National Maritime museum was impressed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For anyone starting out collecting Great War memoirs I would recommend they try and get hold of 'The Great War i was there' , originally published as a part work

in 1938 it is normally found bound in 3 or 4 volumes, not only does it contain extracts from many memoirs it also has original reminiscences specially commissioned

by the publishers. The memoirs are all listed in the index and contains some very scarce ones eg 'A tank drivers experiences' (mentioned on another thread in' books')

It was using this source that i first heard of 'The Squadroon' by A. Beaman and was lucky enough to aquire a copy on E.B (£30?), i notice T.D had a copy for sale and

included some interesting detail on the author, in the book he writes as a chaplain to a cavalry regiment whereas he was really an officer in the 4th Hussars who fought

at Cambrai, 'Michael' and Amiens.

'The Great War, i was there' is also worth getting because it contains photographs of many of the authors like John Lucy , William Lynton Andrews , H.S Clapham ect

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a set that is not bound and many interesting letters etc can be found on the inner covers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi there. I am new to your site. I would like you to know that there are others out there! I have a collection of many of the books you have discussed over the years in your forum. I have been collecting for nearly twenty years. I am an avid follower of Dustjacket collector! The magazines mentioned above were my original inspiration and I used them as a reference source to find titles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi there. I am new to your site. I would like you to know that there are others out there! I have a collection of many of the books you have discussed over the years in your forum. I have been collecting for nearly twenty years. I am an avid follower of Dustjacket collector! The magazines mentioned above were my original inspiration and I used them as a reference source to find titles.

Welcome aboard, I was beginning to think that we Great War memoir collectors were becoming an endangered species.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi there. I am new to your site. I would like you to know that there are others out there! I have a collection of many of the books you have discussed over the years in your forum. I have been collecting for nearly twenty years. I am an avid follower of Dustjacket collector! The magazines mentioned above were my original inspiration and I used them as a reference source to find titles.

Welcome too, all knowledge welcome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great to see you here, Other Ranker, and glad to know you like the same books that we do. Between us we'll probably lead you on to spend even more on books! I know I have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

peter de lotz.... a name from the past, along with Tony Martin, those were the days of awaiting for dealers lists to come thro the post and attending book fairs, trawling thro the 2nd hand book shops most of which are gone, I still have old copies of the "blue list" somewhere most of the dealers listed are long since gone,Peter`s prices were very reasonable, are think the two best cats. were the Betram Rota list and the Tony Martin list of regimental histories {in those days no reprints!}

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More missed than regrets Peter De Lotz's mid 80's, Occupation of the Rhineland £75,

Just looking in de Lotz catalogue no. 15. Occupation of the Rhineland 1944 - £9.00! Must have been before my time.

Rota 245 is certainly a classic catalogue but Tom Donovan's eclipse it for quality over time. And the earlier catalogues from John Marrin had some fine stuff. There are a couple of unique ones I often refer to - Ulysses Cat.7 had a fine selection of WW1. I remember when Peter Jolliffe first opened that shop in Museum Street - he had a window display of WW1 memoirs, all fine copies in jackets - Old Soldiers Never Die, Up to Mametz, Passionate Prodigality, Way of Revelation, Subaltern's War, Winding Road Unfolds (the only one I could afford). Also Reese & Co. Cat. 150. - Literature of the Great War - mostly American but some super books.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think must be confused, I thought Tony Martin was still going out of Germany.

Some of my favorite catalogues where the 80's Maggs Brothers ones . Maybe I ought to do some research for the books mentioned here.

Rhineland, he must not have sold at £9.00, and re-listed it at £75.00 later. Price now huge, one of 100.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...