Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, £114,000. James Joyce’s Ulysses, £150,000. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando — priceless.
At least it would be priceless to readers of this blog.
But according to Simon Roberts, a book expert at Bonhams in central London, a Penguin paperback first edition of Woolf’s classic is only worth a tenner.
Whether pounds or dollars, that doesn’t seem like much to pay for a first edition of our idol’s 1928 psuedo-biography.
Read more about how such book values are calculated in “How to make a killing from first editions” in The Telegraph.
Book expert Roberts appears to be talking about “orange Penguin” editions, rather than hardcover versions of Orlando, in The Telegraph article.
But as Ed Hungerford wrote in an e-mail he sent me, even finding paperback first editions of Woolf at bargain prices seems unlikely.
As he put it, “There are numerous book scouts who spend their time in just such searching, and the book scouts would probably have located any such bargain long ago.”
Where though? I’ve never been able to find a first edition VW for anything like 10 bucks. Where can you find such a rare beastie?
I certainly hope that’s not the case, since I have an Orlando first edition, and I paid a lot more for it than that…