I do want to go to Chelsea

Glimpses of Firsts: London's rare books fair

To clarify: in contrast to the 1978 single by Elvis Costello, I do want to go Chelsea, as I did yesterday, when it involves the Saatchi Gallery and the opening of Firsts: London’s rare book fair.

This market of bookish magnificence brings together dozens of dealers, over three floors of the Saatchi, and only runs for a few days: it closes on Sunday, May 19 at 5pm. As ever, it’s worth trying to catch it if you can, if only for the chance to glimpse an array of remarkable material – manuscripts and incunabula, vintage posters, immaculate modern first editions, unique curios – and even to talk to the dealers themselves, who don’t, for the most part, bite . . .

They also bring along some exquisite items that it might be difficult to examine under other circumstances. This time round, for example, Peter Harrington offers a rare opportunity to take a close look at John Gould’s sumptuous bird illustrations (in forty-three folio volumes, seldom seen or sold as a set). Here – in a collection of works that deservedly occupies a stand of its own at Firsts, separate from the rest of the Harrington fare – are more than 3,000 meticulously executed lithographic plates based on the illustrations of Gould, Edward Lear et al. Photographs are hard pressed to do these artworks justice (as above, I fear). They bristle with feathery life.

So much for the insides; the outsides aren’t too shabby, either (see below). The asking price is £2 million.

At the other end of the scale, Camden Lock Books has the world’s smallest cookbook, from Vienna, the Wiener Kochbuch (c. 1905), which contains more than 100 recipes, despite measuring a mere 22 by 24mm:

Some of these dealers haven’t come far, of course, and many are both well established and well known. But it was refreshing to chat briefly with somebody new to Firsts (and fairly new to the business), Rare Collections by Christo Snyman, who has come from Cape Town for the fair. Presiding deliriously over Christo’s stand was a striking oil painting of Edgar Allan Poe by the South African artist Frans Smit; among other esoteric treasures here were also M. R. James’s copy of Sheridan Le Fanu and the “tales of mystery and imagination”, The Room Opposite, by F. M. Mayor (principally known today, if known at all, as the author of the novel The Rector’s Daughter), to which James supplied a terse endorsement. “The stories in this volume which introduce the supernatural commend themselves to me very strongly.”

This shelf, meanwhile, should give you an idea of what the works of Iain (M.) Banks are worth today, at least when they’ve been kept in very good condition.

Unlike smaller fairs, Firsts inevitably involves much peering into glass display cases, sometimes knowing what you’re looking at, and sometimes being caught out. Ambling around the many display cases of Sophia Rare Books, for example, I found myself staring at this busy title page:

This is – but of course – the magus Dr John Dee’s copy of the Opera (Works) of Apollonius of Perga (Venice: Bindonus, 1537), “one of only three books from Dee’s library in private hands”; apparently it is heavily annotated throughout.

Finally, here are a few glimpses of a unique volume offered by the Leiden-based Fahrenheit 451: a large commemorative album of artworks by thirty Belgian artists who had come to the UK as refugees during the First World War. Produced over a period of some years, in various styles and various media, this substantial album was meant to have been presented as “a token of gratitude” to the Arts Club in Mayfair, but seems never to have made it across the Channel. Priced at £19,500, it ought to be purchased by a museum or some institution that would see its value and respect its integrity by keeping it intact. The Arts Club itself has yet to express any interest.