Library News 

From the Cornishman

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Rare old time at book fair!

IT SAYS much for the continuing appeal and power of the written word that the Morrab Library's annual book fair in St John's Hall attracted a good attendance.

     Lured, partly at least, by the reputation of the high standard of the event's refreshments, as well as by the mouth-watering books on offer, booksellers and buyers, browsers and bookworms, not to mention collectors of postcards, came from all parts of the South West.

     An occasion which owed much of its success to its organiser Claire Hearn, it just so happened that her husband Kelvin Hearn of Newlyn Books also had one of the outstanding items of the fair in his display, a rare six-volume set of The Works of William Shakespeare. A first edition, published in 1725 and edited by none other than the celebrated Augustan poet Alexander Pope, it also had, the added interest of an inscription made in 1770 by a certain M Slye. It is known that among Shakespeare's company of actors there was one with that surname and it could be that this set of books has a direct link with the bard himself. Rescued and, with help of the experienced Bristol-based bookbinder Alan Constance, restored by Kelvin Hearn, probably the most exciting and possibly the most expensive item in the fair, it was yours for a cool £5,500.

     Not the only rare book or books to be seen, there were also first editions of two of Ernest Hemingway's novels Across the River and into the Trees and The Old Man and the Sea", and a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Published in 1909, the last named contained 40 exquisite tipped in colour plates by Arthur Rackham. Priced at £405, it reflected the nature of this book fair that its seller pointed out that, while it was a first edition, it was in "almost very good condition and with no wrapper." Presumably, if it had been in very good condition and had its wrapper, then its asking price would have been a lot higher.

     As always, books about Cornwall attracted great interest and, while there were so many titles concerning just about every Cornish subject under the sun, it is impossible to mention them all, among those that took the eye were Cyril Noall's Levant, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy by his brother John, Eileen Molony's The Mermaid of Zennor & Other Cornish Tales, and John Branfield's Charles Simpson.

     A book fair which always exceed its remit and offers more than books, this year was no exception with everything from a drawing made in 1972 by the Newlyn-based artist Marjorie Mort entitled, aptly enough, Study in the Morrab Library to a huge architect's drawing made in the 1920s for the GWR St Austell of proposed "Improvements to the Station Buildings".

     Then, too, there was Janeta Hevize, co-author with Stevo Jamieson, of The True Story of Bilbo: The Surf Lifeguard Dog, busily signing copies of the book; an album of 41 postcards by the South African artist Kent Cottrell: John Norden's manuscript maps of Cornwall and its Nine Hundreds, and postcards galore from one of packing fish in Newlyn to Duck Street in Mousehole, to Penzance when there were bathing huts and sand on the beach below what was the pavilion.

     The book fair was one of the Morrab Library's major fund-raising events.