M.E.Korn and His Books

After an inglorious decade studying the neuron-pharmacology of the heart of the garden snail (Helix aspersa), which included several years trying to find that elusive organ, I was obliged to reconsider career plans. Book dealing offered itself as a temporary haven, just until the doors of academia reopened invitingly. After nearly forty years, I suspect the hinges are rusted. At the first auction I attended as a professional, I bought for four pounds ten shillings a respectable copy of Bartlett’s Canadian Scenery, hidden under a sofa, and two hundred fifty three other titles, including a volume of T.S Eliot’s essays in mediocre condition, which had caught my ignorant eye. This taught me several lessons: mediocre copies could not be sold for mediocre prices; victory went to the bidder who crawled furthest under sofas; sedulous attendance at auctions would bring easy wealth. Two of these lessons proved useful.

In 1969 I moved to London, with a subscription to the Clique, 200 printed postcards for quoting, and a heap of stock, kept under a plastic sheet because the roof leaked. I set out to learn the business, frequently with a baby slung on my back, who soon learned to hold on when I crawled under sofas. Auctions in London were abundant, I could spend several days a week leafing through antiquarian books, with the occasional chance of picking up a despised mixed lot for a pound or two, and thereby, usually, learning what to avoid. In my second or third year in the business, I had the huge luck of meeting, and being admitted to the society of a group of University College bookmen, among whom Richard Freeman, the bibliographer of Darwin, from whom I learnt much, and especially that there was always more to learn.

Cheerily acknowledged ignorance remains characteristic. Apart from campanology and golf (and we don’t reject them either) we count nothing printed as alien. We enthuse over natural history and grammars of obscure languages. Books are shelved and collated and favoured customers may be offered coffee. Please phone first (020 8800-1302) to save yourself a wasted journey, with nothing to entertain you locally except the widest range of inexpensive eastern Mediterranean food outside Anatolia.