Bond books that tell you more: Part 2

According to the deputy head of rare books at the Bodleian Library, it's fine to scribble in your first edition James Bond (even your 1st/1st of Casino Royale). But do you agree?

Take a look, if you will, at the pictures I’ve put up above (and below), from a copy of Ian Fleming’s ‘You Only Live Twice’.

In all my years buying and selling Ian Fleming first books, this is possibly 'the most' scrawled-over copies I’ve ever seen. In fact, no doubt about it, it is!

Both the front and back end paper spreads are completely covered with writing.

And it doesn't stop there, with more writing extending further into more of the inside pages (see left).

It’s the type of book that already does, and probably ‘should’ (if we are to follow our desire for perfection), make collectors run a mile.

After all, this is a book – a first edition no less – that’s been defaced, written all over.

For many this is a book that is well and truly ruined.

But not-so according to one book specialist, Francesca Galligan.

Galligan is the deputy head of rare books at the world famous Bodleian Library in Oxford.

But, perhaps unexpectedly for someone with this title, and in what is probably a classic example of the worlds of book collecting and book scholarship smashing into each other, she’s not just an advocate of scribblings in books, she actively encourages people to do it.

I’ve blogged previously about how end paper inscriptions in books (such as to/from names, gift messages, or other charming inscriptions), can really breath more life into the static item that is a book, and tell us much more about their previous lives and owners.

In this same blog I slightly lamented how I think it’s a shame that dealers and collectors sometime prize perfection above all else.

But even I was taken aback at Galligan’s rather casual-sounding advice, as I sat and listened last week, to a talk she was giving on ‘How To Look After Your Books’ (a perk of living in Oxford!).

The audience was gathered to hear a talk she was giving, based on the content of her own recently-published book of the same title (see pic, left), which contains a wealth of guidance on collecting, storing, conserving and buying books. 

And yes, she admitted her instruction to annotate may cause alarm.

“We all known clean books tend to be prized over used copies,” she says.

But then she gave her own reasoning for why annotated books should be held in similar high esteem:

“This notion that clean books are best suggests that books can’t get better as time goes on,” she explained, “which is something I fundamentally disagree with.”

She added: “When books become items that are encased in Perspex, they stops being text that can be read, and start being objects that can’t be read, which seems to deny what a book should actually be.” She continued: “Books do, and should change over time.”

Annotations provide more 'colour'

To really press her thinking further, she gave numerous – and very credible –  reasons why we should all be lucky that certain scribbled-on books, which could have been thought defaced and thrown away, are still with us, and all the more important for it.

For instance, there are the notes and a poem that poet John Milton wrote on a first folio of William Shakespeare (above), in which he deplored the poor state of Shakespeare’s legacy, and how sad he was that his work was so “unvalued." Such notes are seen as being important now, because it’s difficult to imagine a time when Shakespeare wasn’t revered.

The 10th commandment annotated by Henry VIII

Other examples included this (see pic, left) of the 1537 ‘Bishop’s Book’ (for the English Reformation), written on by no less than King Henry VIII himself, giving his perspective on the last of the 10 Commandments: “Thou shalt not desire thy neighbours house, his wife, his seruaunt, his mayde, his oxe, his asse, ne any other thynge that is his.”

To this the King added: “wrongfully or unjustly.”

What's interesting here, is that while he was marking-up this commandment against desire, Henry was simultaneously seeking to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (his brother's widow) and was pursuing Anne Boleyn.

Back to Bond:

Taking these two written-on examples into consideration, the former history graduate in me can clearly see the value in what Galligan says.

And to those who think these particular annotations cannot obviously harm a book, because they are the thoughts written in the hands of one of our nation’s most famous monarchs and poets, her final remark on the matter (well, almost), was this: "Today we just can’t know how important a scribble by a ‘nobody’ could be to scholars in 500 years time?

Are you convinced by her logic or not?

I can’t 100% say I was, and so I questioned her directly, asking whether she was suggesting that I (or anyone else), should really be encouraged to write in my first edition of Casino Royale. Her response was this:

“Yes. Marks can help offer new insights into the ownership of a book, and its distinctiveness. Scholars can only ask interesting questions if there is a record of something for them to look at. We ‘have’ to supply future historians with a voice not a void.”

It’s a point well put.

But is her view blinkered?

Is she just seeing books as items that need to have some additional interest for historians in 500 years' time rather than as objects that people prize and covet today (and want to keep nice)?

For the record, I wouldn’t dream of scrawling in my first/first Casino Royale – just to provide something interesting for historians of the future to pour over (and probably interpret wrongly!)

Another hugely scribbled-over medieval book. There's more notes than there is text!

Of course, I appreciate the world that she inhabits, which is overtly academic, where extra insight can be gleaned from books from just the smallest fragments of written notes from some unknown person.

But I think the reason notations are so valuable on books from the Middle Ages, is because there really was a dearth of any other information at that time – unlike today. Someone - at the time - adding their thoughts to a now 500 year old book; yes, I can see how that might fill a gap in knowledge.

But doing so today on a modern book, when there is ‘so’ much information already? On this I'm less convinced.

I would argue there’s plenty of evidence that exists already about what people thought about the Bond books - both now and at the time, so I doubt whether me adding my own reflections on the pages of Bond book is going to add to additional knowledge.

At a stretch, thoughts I have about a particular selection of text, written directly beside it, could be construed as reflective of what a 50-year old man, re-reading it in 2026 thought.

But I don’t know, maybe that’s stretching things a bit far. And it’s not like there isn’t plenty of other information about how (written-word) Bond is perceived.

But going back to the photos of the You Only Live Twice book.

Thanks to it being annotated at the time, we can definitely deduce certain (interesting) things – that in this case our recipient (a John Graham Watson – a well-known name in theatre-land, I believe), was given this, and as a present from who I believe are the rest of a production company.

They clearly held him in very high regard. It’s also vaguely interesting that instead of giving him a copy of Richard II (which I think is the play all the cast members are all in – for several people quote lines from it), these actors and actresses have chosen to gift him a copy of the latest Bond book.

There’s probably more that can be deduced, maybe things about social etiquette in the 1960s; or the extent Bond had appreciation by those in the arts – that sort of thing.

If one had more time, there might be more than can be found out by looking into the names of the people who signed the book.

For these reasons, maybe this particular and much-written over Ian Fleming first edition has a bit more importance than your average Ian Fleming first edition.

Maybe for this reason alone, we as dealers and collectors, shouldn’t be so quick to disown books that have clearly had a ‘life’.

I’d be interested to hear what other people think!

PS Did you notice what I personally think is the most interesting thing about this book?

Have a look at the picture above. The book is contemporaneously dated: March 21^st 1964.

Ring any bells?

It should do.

The book wasn’t even supposed to be out then.

You Only Live Twice was officially published, and available for nearly another two weeks after this – on 1^st April 1964.

How did this copy come to be in circulation ‘before’ its official publishing date???

If only books could talk…