The Vesuvius Club (Lucifer Box #1) by Mark Gatiss: Signed First Edition (Simon & Schuster, 2004)

Continuing this random offering of posts on books I've either had hanging around for a while or ones I simply fancied blogging about – and after yesterday's slight birthday detour – here's a novel I bought because it's the first book in a trilogy, and I picked up the third book in the series in a Sydenham charity shop earlier in the year...

This is the 2004 Simon & Schuster hardback first edition and first printing of Mark Gatiss's The Vesuvius Club. It's the first of League of Gentlemen/Doctor Who/Sherlock writer/actor/producer Gatiss's three books starring lascivious secret service agent Lucifer Box. Each book is set in a distinct historical period: book two, The Devil in Amber (2006) is set just after World War I, while book three, Black Butterfly (2008), is set in the 1950s; I blogged about Black Butterfly back in March and outlined the themes of the series then. As to The Vesuvius Club, let's have a look at the dustjacket flap blurb to see what this one's all about:

As well as detailing the plot, you'll start to get a sense from that glance at the jacket and endpapers of the excellent design of the book. For, as in the case of Black Butterfly, the various designers and illustrators – and indeed stray Doctor Who aficionados – involved in the look of this first edition of The Vesuvius Club have really gone to town. The jacket was designed by the Simon & Schuster's in-house team and David Mann, but the illustration is by Ian Bass, from a concept by former Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman. (Hickman and Gatiss were both active in Doctor Who fandom before they became involved in the show in a professional capacity – as indeed were current and former showrunners Steven Moffatt and Russell T. Davies.) A number of other Bass illustrations pepper the book's interior, too:

Incidentally, Bass and Gatiss also created a graphic novel version of The Vesuvius Club, which was published in 2005. But back to the leering appreciation of the first edition of the novel: the orange arlin case replicates Bass's front cover illustration in a black deboss, while the endpapers, as we've already glimpsed, reproduce Edwardian era adverts (in a similar fashion to issue six of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series, from 1999):

It is, like Black Butterfly, a thoroughly lovely book to gaze at and handle (and hopefully to read; I've yet to start it), and all involved are to be applauded for going the extra mile in its design, particularly in this day and age, when the overall look of novels – ends, case, etc. – has, as I've lamented previously, become something of an afterthought.

Oh, and there's one last thing to note about this particular copy of The Vesuvius Club:

It's signed on the title page. Splendid.

Next on Existential Ennui: a Westlake Score... and a Lewes Book Bargain...

A Book for Rachel's Birthday: The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (Chatto & Windus, 1978, First Edition/First Impression)

Something a little different today...

This is the UK hardback first edition of Iris Murdoch's nineteenth and perhaps most famous novel, The Sea, the Sea, published by Chatto & Windus in 1978. I say "perhaps most famous" because in a career that included such well-known works as Under the Net (1954) and The Bell (1958), The Sea, the Sea is the novel that finally won Murdoch the Booker Prize, in 1978. It's a story about obsession and the use and surrender of magical power, as a theatre director, over sixty and a bachelor, goes to live in a lonely house beside the sea, a house which appears to be haunted... The dustjacket boasts two details from works of art; on the front is a detail from Hokusai's The hollow of the deep-sea wave off Kanagawa, and on the back is a detail from a wall painting in the Golden Hall of the Horyu-ji, Nara, Japan.

The fact that The Sea, the Sea won the Booker makes it one of the more collectible of Murdoch's books, but while there is a ready supply of first editions on AbeBooks, crucially, most of those are second or third impressions (no doubt reprinted at the time due to demand from the Booker-curious) – even if their listings don't state as much (I'm betting a query to the sellers concerned would confirm that in most cases). True firsts, i.e. first editions and first impressions – with a jacket, and not ex-library – are rather thinner on the ground: a copy from a UK seller would set you back around £125-£150.

Now, ordinarily, at this juncture I might be inclined to disclose how much I paid for a particular book. But I shan't be revealing how much I paid for this first edition of The Sea, the Sea, as in this instance that would be particularly vulgar. Reason being, it's a present, for Rachel, whose birthday it is today. The Sea, the Sea, you see, is Rachel's favourite Iris Murdoch novel, and possibly one of her most favourite novels of all time. So by the time Rachel reads this post, she'll be clutching a true first edition of the book in her hands.

All of which leaves only one thing left to say:

Happy birthday, honey! x

Lewes Book Bargain: Never Shake a Skeleton by Alfred Flett (Michael Joseph, 1973); Beverley le Barrow Cover

It's Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK, which means it's a holiday for most folk (I guess the clue's in the name there). But I couldn't very well leave you with nothing to read but the weekend's Doctor Who novelisation post, now could I? So, to kick off a run of what will be for the foreseeable future a reasonably random selection of posts – whatever comes to hand or takes my fancy, basically, although it's a safe bet many of the books will be of a crime or espionage bent – let's have a look at a book I bought in the Lewes Antique Centre, down on Cliffe High Street:

Never Shake a Skeleton by Alfred Flett was published in hardback in the UK by Michael Joseph in 1973. It's the story of an operative for the Establishment, "Freeman", who's led by a beautiful blonde to, as the jacket flap copy has it, "believe he could win a war. But he found, to his horror, that his own side played rougher than the wartime enemy. He tried again—thirty years later. This was his second error. He shook some skeletons. And 'Freeman' found, once more, that his own side were the toughest antagonists of them all..."

I think I get a vague sense of the story from that blurb; it seems to encompass espionage elements, which was part of the reason I bought it. But not the whole reason. I was also curious about Alfred Flett, who, as the back cover author bio notes, was a journalist (and presumably carried on as such after Never Shake a Skeleton was published; there was no second novel for him), which made me wonder if he was any relation to the former Observer journo Kathryn Flett. He almost certainly wasn't her father – her dad's name is Doug, I believe – but might he be related some other way?

But it was spying (hey!) the credit for the cover photograph that made me decide to plonk down the (meagre amount of) cash in the end. Because, once again, it was taken by Beverley le Barrow – here spelt with no third "e" in his first name – a.k.a. Sun newspaper Page 3 snapper Beverley Goodway. I last blogged about Beverley a couple of weeks ago during Ross Thomas Week, Mark III, but as is now traditional I'll direct you to this post for a summary of all my previous missives on him. Interestingly, Never Shake a Skeleton wasn't the only first edition on the shelves of the Lewes Antique Centre which sported a Le Barrow dustjacket; there were a couple of '70s John Creasey novels with cover photos by Beverley, too. Seems Mr. Le Barrow was even busier during the 1970s than I figured...

Next: a first edition that doesn't, in fact, belong to me...

Doctor Who and the Target Novelisations, by Nicholas Jones

In many ways, Doctor Who is to blame for the existence of this blog.

When I was a kid, I loved Doctor Who. Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor, was my Doctor. I literally cowered behind the sofa at his adventures. Stories like Revenge of the Cybermen (1975; cybermats!), Terror of the Zygons (also 1975; the Loch Ness Monster!) and The Brain of Morbius (1976; what the fuck is that thing?!) scared the living shit out of me. I vividly recall peeping out (very occasionally) from behind the settee at all of those serials, completely and utterly terrified out of my tiny mind.

Or at least, I think I recall that. Because I also vividly recall watching Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor serial The Green Death, wherein luminous pollutants from a chemical plant mutate insects to monstrous sizes. Even now I can still clearly visualize that glowing green ooze in the Welsh mine; those awful, disgusting, slick, pale, outsize maggots; and finally that huge, terrifying fly, attacking the Doctor... Except The Green Death was broadcast in 1973, when I was just three years old. There were no video recorders around then and I've certainly never bought and watched it on video or DVD since, or caught a repeat of it on telly. So how can I possibly remember it so distinctly...?

I followed Doctor Who throughout the Tom Baker years and into the Peter Davison ones, and then I did what a lot of young fans of the show did: I grew up and drifted away. I didn't watch many of the Sixth or Seventh Doctors' adventures, and though I did catch the 1996 Eighth Doctor TV movie, I didn't think much of it (and neither, for that matter, did anyone else). And the rest of the time, I pretty much forgot about Doctor Who.

And then in 2005 the series came back, revitalized by Russell T. Davies, and it was brilliant. My passion for the show was rekindled; I remembered how much I loved it as a kid, and fell in love with it all over again. Christopher Eccleston was great as the Ninth Doctor; David Tennant was even better as the Tenth. And now we have Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, about to begin his second series under the guiding hand of Steven Moffatt this very evening. (Which is both incredibly exciting and incredibly sad, coming, as it does, so soon after the deaths of both Lis Sladen – Sarah Jane Smith – and Nicholas Courtney – the Brigadier.)

The return of Doctor Who to television in 2005 prompted me to start buying Doctor Who Magazine – something I don't believe I'd done since its days as Doctor Who Weekly in the late-'70s – within the pages of which I caught up on what Who fandom had been up to over the past twenty or so years. And via its features on past episodes, I also began exploring the history of the show itself... except, here again, often I'd find I had a level of familiarity with serials I couldn't possibly have watched: First and Second Doctor adventures from the 1960s, with William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton up against Daleks and Cybermen and Ice Warriors and Yeti. I hadn't been born when these stories were transmitted – so how did I know some of them so well?

The answer came when I moved down from London to the Sussex town of Lewes in 2008. The move coincided with a rediscovery of novels and fiction – after years of only reading nonfiction – and a consequent and concurrent interest in collecting first editions. Serendipitously, Lewes was unusually blessed with secondhand bookshops, which further fuelled the flames. And it was whilst familiarizing myself with the town's various bookshops that I came across a selection of the Doctor Who novelisations published by Target in the 1970s. The recognition was instant. Their covers were like old friends I hadn't seen in ages: images of Tom Baker and giant robots, Zygons and other aliens I could place but not name; authors like Ian Marter, Malcolm Hulke and most of all Terrance Dicks. I knew these books, and by extension I knew the serials they had adapted, even if I hadn't necessarily watched them back in the '70s. I knew them because I'd read the Target novelisations.

I've always been a voracious reader. As a child I'd spend long hours in my local library, devouring anything science fictional or fantastical I could get my hands on: I didn't care who the author was – and can't remember now any of the writers of these books – so long as they had spaceships or time travel or monsters in them. But the books I loved above all others were the Doctor Who novelisations. Sometimes these would be the W.H. Allen hardbacks, but more often they'd be well-thumbed Target paperbacks, with their cover illustrations by Chris Achilleos and Mike Little and Jeff Cummins and others.

I read every single Doctor Who novelisation Beckenham Library had on its shelves, often repeatedly. Some of the adventures were familiar from television; most I'd never encountered before: it's clear to me now that my "memories" of the Pertwee serial The Green Death come entirely from the Malcolm Hulke Target adaptation. A few of them featured Doctors I barely recognised: a short, jester-like Doctor with a shock of black hair; a Doctor who was more akin to a grandfather than the dynamic swirling-scarfed incarnation I was accustomed to.

After a while I started noticing the names of the authors of these short novels, and then determining which of those authors I preferred (Terrance Dicks was by far my favourite). What I was doing, without really knowing it, was developing critical faculties. This was the first flowering of my sense of the worthwhile versus the worthless, of a recognition of excellence over excrement (although I hasten to add none of the Who novels fell too far into the latter categories) – faculties which would eventually lead to my becoming a music journalist and then take me into publishing; faculties which would result in the blog you're reading right now.

Because while for many fans of a certain age, the Target novelisations are important for the way they preserved the show in an era before video recorders and DVDs and the internet – and indeed preserved some Doctor Who serials that have otherwise been wiped from the BBC archives – or provided additional background elements or details lifted straight from the original scripts (character surnames, thought processes, etc.), for me they're important for different reasons. The Target Doctor Who books were what first got me hooked on novels all those years ago. But more than that, reading the Target novelisations back then, I learned to appreciate some of their authors' talents more than others, and followed the writers I liked the most, thus triggering a lifelong interest in serialised writing – fiction, nonfiction, novels, TV, comics, columns, diaries – and writers of serials.

So it was entirely fitting that when I moved down to Lewes three years ago, and with my at-the-time newly rediscovered passion for books and book collecting gathering pace, the first novels I purchased in a Lewes secondhand bookshop were Target Doctor Who paperbacks. You can see some of them scattered about this very post. It was those books, and countless others like them, that first made me a confirmed book lover. It was those books that eventually turned me into a bibliophile. And so it was those books that were at least partly responsible for my finding a focus for Existential Ennui. Ultimately, then, if it wasn't for Doctor Who – or rather, if it wasn't for the Doctor Who novelisations – you wouldn't be reading this blog.

Of course, whether that's a good or bad thing is open to debate. Something to ponder, perhaps, as we all tune in tonight at 6pm for the new series... Incidentally, there is an entire book about the Target books – called, in fact, The Target Book, published by Telos in 2007. And all being well I'll be returning to that sometime down the line...

Michael Kane: A Warrior of Mars Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (New English Library Paperbacks, 1971, Richard Clifton-Dey Cover Art): Lewes Book Bargains

For this final post in this series on a load of Michael Moorcock paperbacks I bought in the Lewes branch of Oxfam a few months back, we have these:

Left to right are City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders and Masters of the Pit, all published in paperback by New English Library in 1971 (all three are first printings). Together they comprise the Martian or Warrior of Mars trilogy, and all feature twentieth-century scientist Michael Kane, who finds himself transported to ancient Mars and has to battle all manner of vile beasties. The novels were initially published under the pseudonym Edward P. Bradbury by Compact in, I think, 1965 (I'm a little unsure about that date because the third volume, Masters of the Pit, has a copyright on 1969 inside the book); Masters of the Pit was also originally titled Barbarians of Mars. So they are among Moorcock's earliest novels.

And we can end this run of Moorcock posts on a high note, because unlike yesterday's Elric post – where I was struggling to identify the various cover artists – here, having scoured the internet, I believe I've positively identified the man who painted all three of the NEL covers: Richard Clifton-Dey, a British book cover artist who was a contemporary of the likes of Chris Foss and Jim Burns. Clifton-Dey's Wikipedia entry doesn't list the three NEL Mars paperbacks as being by him, but during my research I chanced upon this thread on the Vault of Evil messageboard, which shows other examples of Clifton-Dey's work and reprints a list of his covers from The Paperback Fanatic #9. And as it 'appens I own a copy of another paperback Clifton-Dey illustrated the cover for: the 1976 Panther edition of J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island – bought in Kim's Bookshop, Arundel, reviewed here, and seen just above on the right there. Definitely the work of the same man as illustrated Moorcock's Martian trilogy, I reckon.

Anyway, that's yer lot for Moorcock, but all being well I'll have another SF-themed post up tomorrow, to celebrate the return of a much-loved British science fiction show to our TV screens: Doctor Who...

Elric Novels by Michael Moorcock (New English Library, Arrow, Mayflower Paperbacks): Lewes Book Bargains

Next in this series of posts on the stack of Michael Moorcock books I got in the Lewes branch of charity shop Oxfam, we turn to arguably Moorcock's most famous creation: Elric, the albino warrior sorcerer. The Lewes Oxfam had three Elric novels, all paperbacks, each from a different publisher. Let's have a look at these two first:

On the left is The Sleeping Sorceress, published by New English Library in the UK in 1972 (a first printing, and indeed, as the copyright page notes, "An NEL Original"), and on the right is Elric of Melniboné, published by Arrow in the UK in 1973 (again, a first printing, although the novel was originally published by Hutchinson in 1972). As with most of Moorcock's characters, Elric's history is somewhat labyrinthine, but I believe Elric of Melniboné predates The Sleeping Sorceress chronologically, even though it was published after it (at least, I think it was). And rather than me witter on in an uninformed manner about the plots of the novels, I'd suggest you take a gander at the back covers if you're interested to know what they're all about.

Neither cover illustration is credited in the books, but there is a signature on the rather fine The Sleeping Sorceress picture. Unfortunately, it could be read as either Jan Parker or Ian Parker, and there's seemingly no agreement online as to which it is. I'm leaning towards Jan Parker myself, possibly this Jan Parker, who was an illustrator around this period, and who these days paints abstract pictures. Meanwhile there's not even a signature on the Elric of Melniboné cover to help me out, so I haven't the foggiest who illustrated it, although it is a nice piece of pop art-style collage. And I'm also unsure who was the cover artist on the other Elric paperback I picked up in Oxfam:

The Stealer of Souls, published in paperback by Mayflower in 1968 (this copy is the first reprint from 1969; the book was originally published in the UK by Neville Spearman in 1963). Clearly it's the same artist who created the covers for two of the Moorcock paperbacks I blogged about at the start of this series of posts, 1969's The Jewel in the Skull and The Runestaff:

But I still don't know whether that artist is either the best-known Moorcock cover painter from this period, Bob Haberfield, or some other, as-yet-unidentified artist. As to what the book's all about, The Stealer of Souls is in fact a collection of Elric short stories that originally appeared in Science Fantasy magazine from 1961-62; in the Acknowledgements at the front of the book Moorcock notes "the encouragement and help given me when writing them by John Carnell, the Editor".

And that leaves us with just one more post to come now in this series, which will feature three of Moorcock's earliest novels (in slightly later New English Library editions): the A Warrior of Mars trilogy...