Trolling ne plus ultra Gatsby in the Original Jacket
Even those with but a passing familiarity with the rare book trade will likely be aware of the fabulous sums obtained by a copy of The Great Gatsby in its original dust jacket. A nice first edition without the dust jacket will still net a couple of thousand dollars these days; however, add that pretty piece of paper without any major trauma to it as it first appeared and you can add two zeros to the selling price. Right. But plenty of other modern first dust jackets are more furtive even if they might not claw their way into six figures.
So eager are some collectors to set the hook into these, and so difficult they are to land, that allowances must occasionally be made for the condition in which one finds them. But, to continue my peculiar angling metaphor, that Gatsby is easily out there if you’ve got the bait. The following, in contrast, are coelencaths, unseen and mostly known by rumor until some unknown clamor brings them forth.
If the condition of some of these has you underwhelmed, remember what sage Dr. Zaius warned in The Planet of the Apes: “Be careful what you wish for Taylor, you may not like what you find.” And so with expectations properly adjusted, we present a small handful of rare paper we’ve caught and released over the last few years at Swann.
Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne, The Ebb-Tide. A Trio and Quartette, 1894
George Orwell, Burmese Days, 1934
H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon, 1901
Ellery Queen, The French Powder Mystery, 1930
Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, 1911
Do you have a rare book in its original dust jacket we should take a look at?
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