Book fare

Epsom Library had one of their clearance sales on today, trawling up all kinds of stuff from the darker corners of the Surrey Libraries book repository - perhaps earmarked for redevelopment for affordable housing. Where, for what I think is the first time ever, I found a substantial collection of books from the standard edition of Freud. Rather battered, suggesting much use in the hey-day of the psycho-analysts, and at £6 a pop I might once have been tempted, but today, with a pdf of the complete works sitting on my computer - and used occasionally - not least because Acrobat comes with a search facility, I was not.

Odd that I have not come across any of them before in a second-hand book store. Indeed, the last time I saw them in significant numbers was in the days when Foyles sold them, with a small bookcase devoted to them, on the right, as I recall, as you went down the little flight of steps into the room which housed the psychology department. No doubt long swept away, along with the little wooden booths which once took one's money.

The sale also included lots of theatrical books with lots of obscure plays which one had not heard of, but mostly written by people whom one had heard of, like Synge and Yeats. Collected editions of the works of various French masters, in French, including a handsome 10 volume set of the works of Feydeau, never before heard of, but presumably a big cheese in the 19th century, the set being published in 1896 or so by Calman-Lévy. At least a quick google suggests Feydeau, my only being certain about the initial 'F', with the catch with him being that while most of his stuff was out by 1896, he was still in production until around 1916.

Last but not least, all sorts of obscure books about religion and spiritualism, these last presumably dating from the period between the two world wars when spiritualism boomed.

I managed to escape with just one book, very modestly priced at £1. Slightly puzzled by how the library pricing crew had let me off so lightly, with the book including original theatrical designs by no less an eminence than Topolski, the chap who until recently had a gallery under the arches at Waterloo, now a themed bar of some sort. And also including a full set of library paraphernalia, down to and including the little brown cardboard slip which used to be transferred into one's ticket, fashioned as a slip holder, when you borrowed the book. From the days when card board & card indexes did the work of transistors.