[New-Poetry] Re: An Odd Request

[Robin Hamilton]

What do you read, my lord?

        Books, books, books ...

<<
http://used.addall.com/

This is my favorite used book site. Seems to search a variety of databases 
and I'm always able to get reader's copy at good price.

Finnegan
>>

... although it doesn't seem (on a quick look) to take in amazon co.uk or 
amazon.com second-hand, or ebay.

I ran  <<AUTHOR: Haggart>>   <<TITLE:Life>>  through it and was really quite 
cheered up.

David Haggart was a young man who was hingit in Edinburgh in 1821, hastily 
spending the last few weeks of his life partly dictating and partly writing 
his autobiography, when he wasn't amusing himself by making a right eejit of 
George Combe, the most prominent Phrenologist of the time.

Haggart's misfortune was that he was supremely gifted in two ways -- God (as 
he says) had marked him out as a pickpocket, since the middle and index 
fingers of his left hand were of equal length.  It was unfortunate that only 
at the end of his life did it turn out that he was also a magnificent prose 
writer.  (His poetry is sadly conventional).

The full edition of his _Life_ went through three editions in 1821, the 
third of which was somewhat revised -- Combe withdrew his Appendix on 
Haggart's skull (later confessing that his death cell phrenological 
examination of David was the one time he got things quite totally and 
completely wrong) and is also slightly revised, when it comes to spelling 
and the glossary at the end, by Haggart's attorney who had (reluctantly) 
been left in charge of publishing the work.

In the wake of the John Houston film of the same name, this was reprinted 
with the title _Sinful Davey_ as a Sphere paperback in 1969.

There was also a 24 page chapbook, drastically cut down from Haggart's 
_Life_, published in Glasgow, also in 1821.

Now used.addall.com gives prices for the third eidtion, the Sphere 
paperback, and the 24 page chapbook as follows:

        Third Edition:                 $450        Abebooks

        Chapbook:                    $350        [same bookseller, from 
three different places]

        Sphere paperback:        $101 or $165, from two different 
booksellers.

I'd already bought a copy of the third edition on ebay for $120, and the 
chapbook for $20, which was as much as I was prepared to pay, and a copy of 
_Sinful Davey_ for $15 (most of which was postage) from amazon.co.uk second 
hand, all of which seemed to me fairly reasonable prices.

Anyone who pays $350 for the chapbook has to be off their head -- it's not 
particularly rare, and not in the least interesting.  The first and second 
editions of Haggart's _Life_ don't seem to be available, and would cost an 
arm and a leg if they were.

I've seen the Sphere paperback offered for $1200, though god knows why 
anyone would pay that for it.  It actually *is quite difficult to get, but 
you *can luck out and get it for the price of a typical used 1960s British 
paperback.

The moral of this tedious screed is that I've usually found it pays to 
cross-check prices on abebooks with amazon (abebooks conflates UK and US 
sellers, but amazon.com is pretty much separate from amazon.co.uk) but after 
that it's mostly time wasted for most books.

But if you want a bargain (or what is affordable) it's certainly worth 
looking at ebay and amazon -- the sellers there don't always know what they 
have.

On the other hand, I suspect the bookseller who is selling the chapbook is 
trying to confuse the 186 page full-length _Life_ with the 24 page chopped 
version.

Caveat emptor!!!

Robin