Gerry Wolstenholme's Blog - Posts Tagged "bibliography"
Bibliophile's Heaven: Surprising finds!
I was assisting at the church jumble/rummage sale last night, on the book stall, of course, and amongst the swathe of Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Joanna Trollope, John le Carré et al novels plus modern memoirs there were, surprisingly (they are usually dismissed as worthless), three vintage hardback books.
Two of them were such that I just had to purchase them. The titles were 'A Rent in a Cloud' by Charles Lever and 'The Moon Voyage: containing "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Round the Moon"' by Jules Verne'. And they were published, unusually, by 'Lever Brothers, Ltd., Port Sunlight, Near Birkenhead'.
Interestingly, although the Verne title page states 'Round the Moon', the conclusion of 'From the Earth to the Moon' finishes with the words '(For the Sequel see "Around the Moon")'. And that is the most commonly accepted English title of 'Autour de la Lune' that was originally published in serial form in 1869 and in book form in 1870. The French title of 'From the Earth to the Moon' was 'De la terre à la lune' and that was first published in serial form in 1865 and in book form later the same year.,
Seeing them brought back happy memories, taking me back to my early bookselling days in London when I decided to specialise in Victorian fiction. However, in all my years in the trade I do not recall discovering any Lever Brothers publications in the genre.
There is no publication date stated in the two volumes but as I looked at them I suspected the early 1890s and when I discovered the Verne title had an inscription, 'William Smith/ Abbey View/ Nov 5th 1894' this was confirmed.
I have 12 first editions of Charles Lever's works but I had never seen a copy of 'A Rent in a Cloud' and although I have had copies of 'From the Earth to the Moon' (without the sequel), I had never kept one. Now I am delighted to be able to keep a copy in my collection - my Dad always wondered why I was a bookseller for his view was 'You never really want to sell them [the books]!' He was probably right for I did always regard my stock as MY books!
Nowadays I am not bothered what books are worth, it is immaterial as they are for my collection but out of curiosity I checked up on these two. I could not find a comparable Lever edition but I did spott just a single copy of the Lever Brothers edition of the Verne title on abebooks at a price of £97.11 and available from Canada with a £16.59 shipping charge.
As for the third title, I did not purchase it for it was Sir Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe', which when I read it years ago was nowhere near as exciting as the Classics Illustrated edition I read as a boy and did not have all the swashbuckling that Roger Moore as Ivanhoe presented us with in the television series of the late 1950s. However, I did sell it later to a chap who said, 'I can read this if the football gets boring' (it was England v Tunisia later on television). I didn't have the heart to tell him that he might find parts of 'Ivanhoe' much the same!
So that is two more books added to an ever-growing collection; this book collecting is a disease, I know, and I do understand that I really need counselling!
Two of them were such that I just had to purchase them. The titles were 'A Rent in a Cloud' by Charles Lever and 'The Moon Voyage: containing "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Round the Moon"' by Jules Verne'. And they were published, unusually, by 'Lever Brothers, Ltd., Port Sunlight, Near Birkenhead'.
Interestingly, although the Verne title page states 'Round the Moon', the conclusion of 'From the Earth to the Moon' finishes with the words '(For the Sequel see "Around the Moon")'. And that is the most commonly accepted English title of 'Autour de la Lune' that was originally published in serial form in 1869 and in book form in 1870. The French title of 'From the Earth to the Moon' was 'De la terre à la lune' and that was first published in serial form in 1865 and in book form later the same year.,
Seeing them brought back happy memories, taking me back to my early bookselling days in London when I decided to specialise in Victorian fiction. However, in all my years in the trade I do not recall discovering any Lever Brothers publications in the genre.
There is no publication date stated in the two volumes but as I looked at them I suspected the early 1890s and when I discovered the Verne title had an inscription, 'William Smith/ Abbey View/ Nov 5th 1894' this was confirmed.
I have 12 first editions of Charles Lever's works but I had never seen a copy of 'A Rent in a Cloud' and although I have had copies of 'From the Earth to the Moon' (without the sequel), I had never kept one. Now I am delighted to be able to keep a copy in my collection - my Dad always wondered why I was a bookseller for his view was 'You never really want to sell them [the books]!' He was probably right for I did always regard my stock as MY books!
Nowadays I am not bothered what books are worth, it is immaterial as they are for my collection but out of curiosity I checked up on these two. I could not find a comparable Lever edition but I did spott just a single copy of the Lever Brothers edition of the Verne title on abebooks at a price of £97.11 and available from Canada with a £16.59 shipping charge.
As for the third title, I did not purchase it for it was Sir Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe', which when I read it years ago was nowhere near as exciting as the Classics Illustrated edition I read as a boy and did not have all the swashbuckling that Roger Moore as Ivanhoe presented us with in the television series of the late 1950s. However, I did sell it later to a chap who said, 'I can read this if the football gets boring' (it was England v Tunisia later on television). I didn't have the heart to tell him that he might find parts of 'Ivanhoe' much the same!
So that is two more books added to an ever-growing collection; this book collecting is a disease, I know, and I do understand that I really need counselling!
