The Picture Of London, 1803

I was born in London.

And I grew up there. If there is a defining characteristic of me, it is that I am a Londoner.

I am not a unique in this. London is as famous today for its numerous population as it has been for cenies. It has been the largest city in England, and possibly in Europe for a long time.

The Picture Of London that constitutes my title in this post is the title of a second-hand book that I can't even remember purchasing.

I like to think of myself as a collector of old books, or in many cases a rescuer of old books. In other words, I have often felt compelled to collect books which I find fascinating, but which to any sane collector would be of little interest. Perhaps to be broken up for their illustrations might be their only value, financially.

But value resides in much more than simply the financial exchange that could be made, perhaps particularly with books. I have been aware for some time that books in our culture are completely undervalued.

So, for example, at a car boot sale, it is almost impossible these days to find something of value, that is not recognized as such by the person selling it.

The same, however, is not true for books. It is in books that the general public is perhaps least aware of values, and I can only think that this is because people no longer read and collect books. Of course, many people still do, and I am vastly generalizing.

But the simple fact is that books are in the main undervalued.

This was most famously made clear to me when I purchased an old leather-bound book at an Edinburgh car-boot sale, which I eventually sold at auction in London. I had paid for it 20p, the stall-holder from which I purchased it clearly did not appreciate its value, and in the end, rather than pay 25p for the book on its own, I bought five for £1. My way of ensuring that my interest was seen as general, rather than specific.

The simple fact was that I knew nothing of this particular books’ value, but I recognized it as being of a subject and of an age that made it of interest.

Quite how interesting it was I only discovered over a period of time.

Its particular story is an interesting one. The subject matter was clearly geographic, in the general sense. It was a collection of stories about journeys into the North, by way of exploration. I knew enough about a book of this age that this must be of more interest than the 20p price-tag allowed.

My suspicions were verified even before I had arrived home from the car-boot sale, which was only about a half hour's walk from where I lived.

On the way home, there was a second-hand bookshop of reasonable quality, and I couldn't resist asking them if they would like to purchase my recent purchase. And they offered me £50.

Since financial value was not my main preoccupation, needless to say, I did not part with it, but this simply raised my curiosity.

It was difficult for me to find out anything about the book or values for similar volumes, sold second-hand. I later discovered why.

It was dated 1786, and it contained at least one fold out hand colored map, not very large, but sufficient to make its fine leather binding even more intriguing.

My next attempt to find out more about the book took me to a specialist antiquarian book-dealer in Edinburgh, who explained a great deal more about the book, and at the end of our conversation, said that it was difficult to value, but that he would be prepared to take a chance on this uncertainty and offered me £100 for it.

I was getting even more curious now.

The uncertainty, it seems, derived from the fact that although it was a first edition, published in the same year as the English first edition, which was a translation of a German original, it was in fact a pirate first edition, published in Dublin at a time when respect for copyright was virtually non-existent.

The original German book had been published some years before, and the author it seemed had travelled with a naturalist that had later traveled aboard The Beagle, with that most famous of explorers, Charles Darwin.

Its unusual provenance, as a pirate first edition, gave it some uncertainty that didn't detract from its importance as a catalogue of seaboard exploration from the late 18th century onwards.

It was in this context that I suppose convinced me that I should take a risk on submitting it to a specialist London antique book auction, in which the focus would be on the subject matter in general to which the book belonged. I was completely surprised when it finally reached a sales price of £250, and I had the satisfaction not only of the money, but of having enabled the book to find someone that would have been particularly interested in its contents.

And so back to the picture of London, dated 1803.

This book was much more straightforwardly researchable from the Internet, and if it had been in better condition, it might have been worth about £450.

As it was, my copy needed rebinding, as it was split into two, and although lacking none of its illustrations, engravings of London mainly of the river. It is in the kind of condition that makes it more of a curiosity rather than suitable foreign investment.

On the frontispiece, it is clear that an edition in fine calf leather was available at a price of 10 shillings, and my research quickly identified that this would have been a book that would have been purchased by a Gentleman visitor to London, because it provided an invaluable guide to just about every aspect of London life at the time.

It seemed that it was an annual publication, something like the 1803 edition of The Rough Guide to London.

As such, it is an extraordinarily interesting guidebook to the metropolis at the turn of the 19th century. Where you could hear decent music, where to visit for just about any reason, and an indication of what was happening in just the same way as which specialist magazines published weekly these days details of what is going on in London.

I still keep it on my shelves, and often point it out to people as my Rough Guide to London for 1803.

I suppose it is one of my few sadnesses that my condition of multiple sclerosis makes it difficult for me to hold and handle the books on my bookshelf, and I no longer read as once I did.

But this does not detract from the fascination I still have with old books, and my shelves still groan with what can only be described as interesting artefacts.