Tag: Book Collecting

Staring at the Sun | Dust Jacket Slide (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987)

Notes on this edition: Julian Barnes. Staring at the Sun | Dust Jacket Slide Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

This ephemeral slide depicts the dust jacket art work for  the Alfred A. Knopf edition of Julian Barnes’s novel Starting at the Sun. Julian Barnes sent the slide to Rolland Comstock, noted book collector who specialized in contemporary authors. Barnes has inscribed the paper enclosing the slide and included a note dated 10 May 1996 to Comstock that reads:

“Dear Rolland:
Turning out my study I came across
this Knopf transparency for the SAS cover.
I bet you haven’t got it. I shall be dismayed
if you have. This is to assuage the guilt
I still feel at only being able to sign 48%
of your suitcase.
Hope one of your children is getting
interested in books.
Best wishes,
Julian B.”

“Julian Barnes on Books” (Slightly Soiled, 1986)

Notes on this edition: “Julian Barnes on Books.” Slightly Soiled, Issue 3/4, December 1986. Pp. 15-16.

Julian Barnes has written several times on book collecting, but this essay represents one of his earlier approaches to the topic. Inscribed to his bibliographer.

Book and Magazine Collector, No. 98 (May 1992)

Notes on this edition: Hynson, Colin. “Julian Barnes.” Book and Magazine Collector, No. 98, May 1992. Pp. 39-45.

This issue of Book and Magazine Collector features a lengthy overview of Julian Barnes’s publications up to Talking It Over (1991). The piece depicts the beginning of an overall increase in the collectible value of Julian Barnes books, especially for his highly-praised novel Flaubert’s Parrot.

A Life with Books (Jonathan Cape, 2012)

Notes on this edition: Julian Barnes. A Life with Books. London: Jonathan Cape, 2012. Pp. 27 + [1]. 15 x 11 cm. ISBN: 9780224097260. £1.99.

Published by Jonathan Cape to celebrate Independent Booksellers Week ( 30 June-7 July 2012). It was sold exclusively in independent bookshops. Proceeds from the sale of this pamphlet were donated to Freedom from Torture: The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

Bound in cream paper wraps with red and black lettering. The author and title of the book are embossed, as pictured. The exact number of copies published is estimated by the author to be around 17,000.

The essay was also published in The Guardian.

Thirty-Seventh Antiquarian Book Fair 1996

Notes on this edition: Julian Barnes. “Introduction.” Thirty-Seventh Antiquarian Book Fair, 1996. London: Antiquarian Booksellers Association, 1996. Pp. 128. 23.5 x 16.9 cm.

In 1996, the Grosvenor House in London hosted the Antiquarian Booksellers Association’s Thirty-Seventh Antiquarian Book Fair, and Julian Barnes wrote the introduction to the fair catalog (pp. 5-7). His essay discusses book collecting and the idealistic notion of “completeness”.

Of the limited number of catalogs published for this occasion, one hundred were signed by Barnes at the end of his introduction. Each signed copy was numbered, as pictured.