Beschreibung
Grey wrappers. Inscribed by the compiler to the subject's widow, "For Beryl from David 3/30/01. With love & thanks"; loosely inserted a presentation typed letter signed to Mrs Sims from the author, 1p. 4to, Collingswood, 30 March 2001, and an earlier autograph letter signed, 1p. 4to, Collingswood, 18 July 2000. 88-page, 304-item catalogue, designed by Jerry Kelly and divided into five sections, "Books and Pamphlets by George Sims", "Books Printed under George Sims' Peacocks Press Imprint", "G.F. Sims Catalogues and Ephemera", "Association Books", and "Miscellaneous". The best handbook to George Sims outside his own books - most of which of a bookish sort (when not produced by the Tragara Press) were published by the cataloguer. David Jeffrey Holmes (1945-2016) began his bookselling career in Boston in 1972. "In 1974 when I was just getting my feet wet as a rare book and manuscripts dealer," he writes in an introduction, "a colleague gave me a catalogue from G.F. Sims of Peacocks, Hurst, Reading, Berkshire. The catalogue was crammed with reasonably priced rare and interesting books and manuscripts, many of them by lesser known nineteenth and twentieth-century authors not often found in the typical high-spot catalogues. I quickly learned to drop everything when a Sims catalogue arrived, and phone in my order immediately, for George had loyal and eager customers everywhere, and most items did not languish on his shelves." Holmes's first visit to Hurst, in 1976, was almost a disaster, as the clocks had changed and he missed his train. But he and Sims became friends, "and the series of memorable and soon to become familiar (though less harried) Sunday trips from Paddington, past Slough and Reading to the Twyford Station were to become highlights of my career as a rare book dealer . . . Every volume had to be taken down off the shelves because so many of the books George dealt in were association books or contained inscriptions or had letters inserted. The question was not would the next book be an interesting copy, but how interesting would it be?" Holmes's letters to Beryl Sims are fond and friendly, giving news from home and reporting on the progress of his catalogue; hoping that the finished article meets with her approval. As well as giving an insight into George Sims's trade life and pastime as a writer of crime fiction, the catalogue indicates the breadth of his friendships, with books inscribed by Sims to, among others, Alan Anderson, Roy Fuller and (the designer of Holmes's publications) Ellis H. Neel Jr, and books inscribed to Sims by Richard Aldington, Alan Anderson, Miriam Benkovitz, Leon Edel, Roy Fuller, Philip Gosse, Harford Montgomery Hyde, James Laughlin, Mark Samuels Lasner, Shane Leslie, Michael Meredith, S.J. Perelman, Frederic Raphael, Martin Secker, Julian Symons, Helen Thomas and Cecil Woolf. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 32M100461
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