Only 27 years to sell a book (Report, 22 November)? In around 1968, in Browns Bookshop, Hull, I bought a copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, new and embossed with the shop logo, that had apparently been sitting friendless on the shelf since it was published in 1913 – 55 years unloved. I paid what I suspect was the original price of 21 shillings for this first edition illustrated by Charles Robinson, my copy being worth now upwards of £200. I’ve encountered longer intervals of new-unsold on academic journals and texts, but this was a book for popular purchase; Hull was city of culture in 2017, not, however in the bleak terrace clearances of the 1960s.
Anthony Cheke
Oxford
• I used to run Bluecoat Books in Liverpool and had a bet with a fellow bookseller that every book has a price. He disagreed, so we bet a fiver on it and he produced the Cecil Parkinson biography. The aim was to sell 20 in a week. We mixed it in with four other biographies including the Normans (Tebbit, and Fowler of “pluck you” fame) and two others so famous that I can’t recall who they were. We called it the Tory Prat Pack and priced it at £1 for all five. The conditions were that buyers were not allowed a bag, and had to carry them out of the shop with spines exposed. Also they had to be placed in a prominent position in the house, and at least one book had to be read. We sold 20 packs in two days and people asked for them for months afterwards, but I can’t recall ever being paid my winnings. We did find a signed copy of Norman Tebbit, which we sold online for £30, but it took about 10 years.
Paul McCue
Ellesmere Port, Cheshire
• The Larger Moths of Warwickshire has a captivating title for a novel. What is it about?
David Gibson
Leeds
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