Auctioned book collection

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks for that, Tix. I enjoyed reading about your visit to Julia Sesemann, and your purchases sound great!

[IceMaiden]

That sounds wonderful Tix. How marvellous to be able to visit a collector and see such a wonderful collection. You would surely be able to converse for hours with a fellow kindred spirit. I know I would!

[David Chambers]

A seller is currently listing Come to the Circus on eBay, the picture book story not the long book, as Enid’s rarest book. This is nothing new but for the sake of accuracy I feel I must point out that Julia did have a copy (the seller implies otherwise). Her copy was one which had belonged to Cherry, the daughter of an old school friend of Enid’s mentioned in Barbara Stoney’s biography. Julia sold it to me over a decade ago for £16. I have seen others over the years, but possibly it isn’t that common. I’m not sure I’d pay £229!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Ridiculous price! I don't have that book but I certainly won't be going for it. It's a mangy-looking specimen too!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/145228439730 ... R7SBhqC5Yg

I'm glad you were able to buy Julia's copy, David.

[Kate Mary]

I’ll pass as well, you can save yourself £229.99 + £5.70 p&p by looking in the Cave, the whole book is there for us all to read for free.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks for reminding us of that, Kate. Come to the Circus is a description of a circus performance rather than a story as such, but Eileen Soper's illustrations are exquisite. I particularly like the chimpanzee, the dogs and the acrobats.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/boo ... the+Circus

[Katharine]

I'm not sure I'd be prepared to pay £229 for any book, but if I did, I'd want it to be in a better condition than that one! Even though the illustrations are really lovely.

I clicked on the link to view it on E-Bay, and have just received an e-mail telling me that the seller is open to offers - do you think a tenner would do it?

[Boatbuilder]

You can only but try, Katharine.

[Tony Summerfield]

Some of you are being generous to the seller here as the price asked is actually now £339.99 what I would call £340! Julia subscribed to the Journal for many years and I had a number of phone conversations with her and I don't believe that she ever said that she had a copy of every Blyton book ever published. I was aware that she had three or four books published by Birn Brothers and there are over forty listed and shown in our Cave of Books and I firmly believe there are quite a few more waiting to be discovered, unfortunately Enid didn't have any of these books in her own collection and for anybody who tells me that the British Library has every book that was published, there are quite a few Blyton books that they don't have copies of.

Here is the "rarest" Enid Blyton book!!

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/boo ... the+Circus

[Anita Bensoussane]

Crumbs - I didn't realise inflation was quite that high!

The eBay seller upped the price to £339.99 at 10.41 am, as can be seen on the listing:

Last updated on 06 Aug, 2023 10:41:02 BST

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06 Aug, 2023
10:41:02 BST
Buy it now price

[Lucky Star]

Ridiculous price. I would never pay that for such a grotty looking copy of any book. What a treasure trove The Cave is that we can see and read the whole thing in perfect form for free.

[Boodi 2]

I totally agree! Having said that, I only collect books in order to read them and the actual condition of the book never bothered me in the slightest, as long as all the pages were intact. When I lived in Dublin I scoured second-hand bookshops and charity shops looking for Blyton books and was often quite successful. I also found an English edition of a Blyton book (actually the FF "Billycock Hill") in a second-hand bookshop in Prague, of all places!!!

[timv]

Very interesting to read which is the rarest of the Enid Blyton books - thanks, Tony. I have been visiting second-hand bookshops since the late 1970s, when I was looking for tougher hardback copies of my old Armada paperbacks that had fallen to pieces due to enthusiastic use by then. I also collected in a more serious way from the early 1990s onwards, including Enid's books, and when I lived in South Wales to 2002 was a regular summer visitor to the Hay on Wye shops - and I have very rarely come across the wartime Brockhampton editions of the non-series Blyton books and never of the original 'Come To The Circus' from 1943. Annuals and story collections are more often seen than individual story books - I have never come across the original of Three Boys And a Circus either , my copy having been in a 'Dog Stories' collection yellow HB from the early 1960s.

Presumably the shortage of paper then meant even more limited editions than usual, though this does not prevent first edition Fives and Adventure series books turning up. Until I checked in the Cave to see if Come To The Circus 1943 was an early version of the book with Fenella, Willy et al which I was familiar with, I had no idea that Enid had written two books with the same title. For that matter, it would have been nice to have a follow-up for the Fenella 'Come TTC' book too - the strong characters mean that there are as many potential storylines there as with the Galliano series. We might even have learnt what had happened to Presto in the past to make him too upset to smile again until Fenny's surprise return gave him some new hope about human nature... or Enid could have done a crossover and brought Carlotta (pre or post her St Clares education) into the story.

[Anita Bensoussane]

That edition of Come to the Circus may not be all that common, but Tony was being tongue-in-cheek when he echoed the eBay seller in calling it the "rarest" Enid Blyton book. The seller appears to be assuming that any vintage Blyton book not included in the Julia Sesemann auction must be rare.

[Judith Crabb]

Yes Anita, It is a rash assumption to assume that that a particular title was not in a dealer's collection. I remember being informed sternly by my business partner that as a dealer, that comes first. Sell if you're getting a fair price, and if you must collect (my partner was not a collector, I fear that I always have been), assume that another copy will 'come in' - and often enough, though not always, it did.
I suspect that we society members shall be entertained for some time to come with items from the Sesemann 'collection' surfacing on eBay, at prices we used to refer to as 'flying a kite'. I went to the Cave of Books and found that I have one of the more recent editions in my set of 'Enid Blyton Little Books' - It's number six and my copy has an elephant on the front cover. It is a true 'new edition' rather than a reprint as some of Soper's eye-catching illustrations are omitted - for example the double-page centre-spread is not used - but other illustrations are included and changes are made to some other pictures. I bet that you could buy one of these for a more modest price and the best news is that the story is not abridged at all.