Rare book Specialist Duncan McCoshan shares a few insights into his role as bibliographic detective at Peter Harrington.
People tend to find their way to the trade in fairly varied ways. What was your journey to rare books, and was it the career you had always aspired to?
As a boy I was an avid reader but came into the book trade as a school leaver; so, no, it wasn’t a career I had always aspired to.
What does a typical day look like for you at Peter Harrington?
A typical day for me starts with reading through the daily catalogue bulletin of things that have been finished by our team of cataloguers. Then often I confer with Glenn Mitchell, one of our Senior Specialists, who I work with, and he directs me towards anything that needs to be prioritised. Then it’s on with the cataloguing!
You have a reputation amongst your colleagues for being able to track down even the most illegible of ownership inscriptions in books to their source. What do you enjoy most about this kind of detective work?
Well, it’s because it is detective work! It’s very rewarding to be able to trace whose hands a book has been through. Sometimes it will add value monetarily but more often it will add interest for a potential purchaser, perhaps turning up a connection between author and owner that’s a window into the milieu in which the book was born.
WHITMAN, Walt. Complete Poems & Prose. Philadelphia: Ferguson Bros. & Co., Printers, .
A copy of Walt Whitman’s Complete Poems & Prose, about which Duncan uncovered a very special provenance: Whitman records personally sending this copy to the owner, the memorably named R. F. Wormwood (inscribed by him at the front), in his Day Book. Wormwood was a journalist and newspaper editor and his apparently unimportant signature had simply been overlooked. It is unusual to be able to make such a special and intimate connection between an author and a particular copy of a book.
Has the role of rare book cataloguer changed over the years, in your experience?
I think things are, perhaps, more rigorous now, and at Peter Harrington we like to go that extra mile for a book, in terms of describing it accurately and finding something that other booksellers may have not noticed. The internet has aided hugely the work of a rare book cataloguer: when I started out in the late 70s one squinted for hours at the miniscule print of the old British Museum Catalogue or had to visit the London Library. There were, of course, bibliographies and standard reference books but being able to confirm provenance or scarcity (or lack of it!) has been transformed.
Are there any recent acquisitions that you are especially excited about?
We recently acquired a copy of the rare Cranwell edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), Lawrence of Arabia’s “big book” – it is such an extraordinary production and a pleasure to handle. But there are also smaller things, such as an obscure regimental history concerning a Scottish unit in the Boer War, by an officer who served in that conflict.
What subjects and genres do you find most intriguing?
My special interests are military and jazz, which Glenn has developed. I’m a fan of the music and some of the pieces that we handle are museum quality and genuinely exciting. We have a jazz catalogue – our first devoted to the subject – coming out in October 2022.
Outside the world of rare books, you’re a talented cartoonist. How do you split your time between cataloguing and other pursuits?
I have illustrated over 40 children’s books in collaboration with my writing partner but now concentrate on the strip that has been running in Private Eye for, ooh, about 22 years, now – It’s Grim Up North London.
