Nicolas Barker

A mixed bag of memories

In 1958, half way through the century here recorded, the late and much lamented National Book League put on the first ever antiquarian book fair, with 24 members of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association exhibiting. ‘We hope,’ wrote The Book Collector, ‘that the ABA will be encouraged to make this an annual event.’ It did, and in the process transformed the way old books were bought and sold (a fact unnoticed here). It became the custom for some celebrity (or what passed for one) formally to open the fair. One year it fell to my turn. I had noticed that all previous openers had always said, sententiously, how much they owed to the booksellers they knew. I thought I would go one better; I too, I said, owed much to the booksellers I knew, and I read out the names and the sums outstanding.

This went down like a lead balloon on the few listening booksellers (the rest were too busy trading). But it was an important point. In the 19th century, Joseph Lilly wrote to Lord Lindsay, who had complained that he had had no statement of account for two years, ‘It is more valuable to me to own your Lordship’s debts than to have your Lordship’s money.’ He meant it; not only were they negotiable when it came to buying more stock, they were a moral bond that linked book-buyer to bookseller. Blackwell’s used to price their books ‘8/6 (7/- cash)’, clearly preferring the former — indigent undergraduates could become rich later and buy more books.

There is not much of this in the ABA’s new conspectus (the title is silly — when did a bookseller ever admit to making a profit?). It is not a conventional history at all.

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