By the 1960s a copy of Graham Greene's 'Brighton Rock' without its dust jacket was worth about £500. But with its dust jacket more like £2,000 - if you could find one. The last copy with a perfect jacket to come on the market changed hands at £50,000. 'Brighton Rock' was a high-point, but first editions of other early Greene books weren't much less valuable. And then there were signed copies, foreign printings, limited editions, numbered and signed . . .
John Baxter caught the collecting bug in the winter of 1978 when he found a rare copy of Greene's children's book 'The Little Horse Bus' while browsing in a second-hand market in Swiss Cottage. It was going for 5p. It would also, fortuitously, be the day that he first encountered one of the legends of the bookselling world: Martin Stone.
At various times cokehead, pothead, alchoholic, international fugitive from justice and professional rock musician (said to knock Eric Clapton into a cocked hat), he would become John's mentor and friend, and a central figure in this book.
In this brilliantly readable, stylish and funny book John Baxter introduces us to his world, the world of the fanatical collector: not only the kind who buys from catalogues or at auction and takes away the booty in bubble wrap to store in metal filing cabinets - but also the sleuth, the one who uses bluff and guile to hunt down his quarry.
Along the way we meet a cast of eccentric characters like Driff Field who only collects books about suicide or by writers who have killed themselves; we meet the completists, the condition freaks, the rich and famous - from Barry Humphries and Harvey Weinstein to Sarah Michelle Gellar.
This is a book with real word-of-mouth potential that literary editors will go weak at the knees for; booksellers will bask in and the literati will adore.
