Slightly Foxed - Still Desirable: Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting - Hardcover

Searle, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 028562945X ISBN 13: 9780285629455

Publisher: Souvenir Press, 1989

Synopsis

As any, even vaguely addicted book collector will have swiftly learned, most booksellers' catalogues are written in a parallel language that can fool anyone but the 'cognoscenti' and which makes the mysteries of the Rosetta stone, or Linear B, look like something out of Enid Blython. Without a smattering of inside information, the baffled but hopelessly-bitten book buyer is drifting unarmed and unprepared into a minefield whose perilous complexities will usually only be made plain when an eagerly awaited parcel of dream volumes arrives and mangled contents are revealed in all their deceptive glory.... But all is not lost. Help is at hand! After a lifetime of avidly scanning the frequently poisonously-tinted pages of innumerable book catalogues, Ronald Searle has become expert in the art of decoding those esoteric, poetic and usually approximate, descriptions of literary come-ons. Now, licking his wounds, he publishes his hard-earned findings in this fully illustrated pioneer guide, designed to foil the devious machinations of scheming and wicked booksellers for ever more. No longer will the innocent book collector need to puzzle over the finer meaning of 'old half road', 'good working copy', blind tooled', or 'tail-edged shaved'. The unvarnished truth is here exposed at last, both in the shocking explicit drawings and in the devastatingly frank glossary whose revelations will startle even the most battle-scarred of bibliophiles. The result is one of the funniest, most entertaining books to have emerged from the brilliantly perceptive pen of the master. No book collector, and certainly no bookseller, can afford to be without it - even the wicked ones.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Searle is a graphic artist, cartoonist, animator, and film designer. He is the author of dozens of books, most recently "The Terror of St. Trinian's and Other Drawings," He has had one-man shows in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and all over Europe, and his work is also found in the permanent collections of museums in London, New York, Paris, and Berlin, among others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Souvenir Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 028562945X
• ISBN 13: 9780285629455
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128