A Pound Of Paper

By the 1960s a copy of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock without its dust jacket was worth about o500. But with its dust jacket more like o2,000 - if you could find one. The last copy with a perfect jacket to come on the market changed hands at o50,000. Brighton Rock was a high-point, but first editions of other early Greene books weren't much less valuable. And then there were signed copies, foreign printings, limited editions, numbered and signed ohn Baxter caught the collecting bug in the winter of 1978 when he found a rare copy of Greene's children's book The Little Horse Bus while browsing in a second-hand market in Swiss Cottage. It was going for 5p. It would also, fortuitously, be the day that he first encountered one of the legends of the bookselling world- Martin Stone. At various times cokehead, pothead, alchoholic, international fugitive from justice and professional rock musician (said to knock Eric Clapton into a cocked hat), he would become John's mentor and friend, and a central figure in this book. n this brilliantly readable, stylish and funny book John Baxter introduces us to his world, the world of the fanatical collector- not only the kind who buys from catalogu