The juiciest VN piece at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair was from Peter Harrington Books (London), a copy of VN’s translation of Despair published by John Long in 1937 (Juliar A15.2). Not so unusual without a dust jacket. But this copy was quite unusual—it has a dust jacket and was offered at £17,500/$26,250. A fair enough price, actually, considering its rarity.

Here are photos of two different copies with the same dust jackets: the Peter Harrington copy and one that Christie’s sold at auction on June 19, 2007. On the first one, you can see the black cloth peeking out of its dust jacket. That binding has gilt stamping, a blind rule bordering the front cover, and gilt rules at the top and bottom of the spine.On the second, the orange cloth binding is peeking out. It has black stamping with no rules on the front cover or on the spine.

I have no direct evidence yet, but I suspect that the dust jackets may come in two variants with two prices on the spine: 7/6 and 3/6.  I do know for certain that John Long’s earlier publication of Camera Obscura (Juliar D14.4) was labeled and sold at each of those two prices.

How many copies of the book are there? VN said in the foreword to his 1966 translation of the novel, “…the book sold badly…a German bomb destroyed the entire stock. The only copy extant is, as far as I know, the one I own…” We know today that multiple copies (countable in the dozens, I estimate) survive. But only a small number still retain their dust jackets. (I will try to get a color photo of the copy held at the Washington University Library in St. Louis.) It’s not many more than the four I’ve examined or seen photos of. They’re quite distinguishable in the same way individual right whales are by their callosities. Each surviving dust jacket has its own tears, rips, chips, and discolorations.

I would appreciate hearing about and seeing photos of other copies of the 1937 Despair in dust jacket. Also of Camera Obscura.

More

I have two more items from the fair, both non-VN, to write about and one story, in “VN at the NY Book Fair (4)”.