Dr Philip W. Errington

May 27, 2021 | Articles, Harry Potter, Recent Articles, The Booksellers

Dr Philip W. Errington joined Peter Harrington in April 2021 after over 21 years at Sotheby’s where he was a director and senior specialist.  He received his BA, MA and PhD from the Department of English at University College where he is currently an honorary research associate. A bibliographer by training, he has published major bibliographies on John Masefield and J.K. Rowling. He has lectured and written widely on Masefield with his work published by Penguin Classics and Carcanet, and others. We talk to Philip about his career and role at Peter Harrington.

First thing’s first: you are a prolific bibliographer, but could you give us more detail about what this entails?

I like the idea of a “prolific bibliographer”: I’ve only published two! But they take such a long time that this is, I suppose, quite a large number. At the most basic level, a bibliography is about establishing a canon and chronology. My particular work is descriptive bibliography: the study and description of books as objects. 

A bibliographer doesn’t necessarily care about the artistic merit of a text, but rather the focus is on printing and production. It’s a distinct discipline and there are rules you have to follow in your methodology. I like to think of it as creating a map which – for a single author bibliography – helps researchers, critics, book collectors, etc., navigate a writer’s works. To mix analogies, it’s a bit like archaeology for books.

When did you decide you wanted to be a bibliographer?

As an undergraduate I discovered that there were huge gaps in a specific topic in which I was interested. I filled them in by sitting for days in a library with rolls and rolls of microfilm. (Today, of course, I could achieve the same result in a few hours using online databases). In many ways, this led to an M.A. and then a PhD. 

A few decades ago, a bibliography would provide very simple descriptions and that was that. Today there’s more scope to delve into authors’ and publishers’ archives. I’ve spent many happy hours in libraries across the world establishing various bibliographical facts. I particularly remember connecting correspondence between an author, his or her literary agent and the publisher. Until then, these collections had been split between several archives (and two continents). Pulling together a single narrative from different sources was exhilarating. I should say, of course, that I appreciate the contents of a book, too – but a bibliographer’s perspective adds another dimension to it!

Dr Errington’s two published biographies on John Masefield and J. K. Rowling

You were previously at Sotheby’s for 21 years – can you tell us more about what you did there and your career prior to joining Peter Harrington? 

I joined the auction world straight after my PhD, and it was my introduction to the commercial world of antiquarian books and manuscripts. Twenty-one years was a long time to stay in my first job and I slowly climbed the slippery Sotheby’s slope to become a director, senior specialist and auctioneer. I worked on English Literature sales, together with children’s literature, private press and original illustrations. There are many, many career highlights and I worked with some phenomenal collections, wonderful collectors and many authors or illustrators. But my arrival at Peter Harrington has rekindled the excitement and joy of the book trade for me. It’s refreshing to join a place where a passion for books is shared by all.

Your PhD on John Masefield was published by the British Library – and that was just the beginning of your expertise. What particularly draws you to his work?

Unless you’d like to do a feature on Masefield, I’d better be brief… In 1952, writing of second-hand bookstalls, Masefield stated that the “out-of-fashion is always cheap, and usually much better than the fashion has the wit to think”. I think it’s a great epitaph on Masefield’s own work. I’ve published editions of Masefield’s work with Penguin Classics, Carcanet, Pen and Sword, Egmont, New York Review of Books and The Folio Society. I’ve given lectures and seminars. I’ve appeared on TV and made newspaper headlines. But the joy of reading Masefield is constant. Although many people now only remember him as the author of the children’s fantasy The Box of Delights or as a poet, some of his prose is magnificent. He writes with the precision of a poet and has never failed to inspire me.

First edition of John Masefield’s The Box of Delights, 1935, £175.00. (BOOK SOLD)

Having made record sales of J. K. Rowling’s work – The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which sold for £1.95M, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which sold in 2013 for £150,000 – it’s safe to say that you are a Rowling expert in the rare books industry. How did you come to focus on her work?

Because I was responsible for children’s literature at Sotheby’s, I got to run the show when Jo Rowling decided to sell a seventh manuscript copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard for her charity, Lumos, in 2007. I visited her at home in Edinburgh and discussed the project, catalogued the item and took it on exhibition to New York. There were specific reasons why it sold for £1.95M (including two very committed bidders) and I’m very proud it’s still the world record for a modern literary manuscript sold at auction. When human rights organisation English PEN then organised a charity sale in 2013, I approached Jo for a contribution and an annotated copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the result. 

One significant achievement of my work with the author is my second bibliography. I well remember Pom Harrington viewing a copy of Philosopher’s Stone at Sotheby’s and pointing out that the wealth of misleading information in the trade about what makes a copy of Harry Potter valuable meant a bibliography was needed. One thing led to another and the first edition of my book was published in 2015; an updated edition followed in 2017. I’m very conscious that one of the (if not the) leading dealers for Harry Potter material now has Rowling’s bibliographer as a member of its team. Combining everyone’s expertise makes me question why someone with a Harry Potter enquiry would do anything except come to us!

You have a great deal of experience in children’s literature, including visiting the studio of Quentin Blake and viewing his extensive archive, discussing rabbits with Richard Adams, achieving a world record for the sale of a book illustrator’s work – an unknown illustration by Beatrix Potter – and then beating your own record when you sold an original drawing of the ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ for £430,000! What led you to specialise in this area?

I love children’s books and, indeed, original book illustrations. Everyone remembers their early books and if, like me, you were fortunate to be surrounded by loads of books as a child, it’s part of who we are. Collecting children’s literature brings with it the big problem of condition. If a book has been read and loved by a child, it may not survive in a collectable state. But I challenge anyone to pick up a first edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Potter’s Peter Rabbit or Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and not get a little thrill from holding a copy of how the world first received these stories. 

With artwork there’s also the excitement that an original illustration frequently differs from its many reproductions in print. The wonderful illustrated books of the 1910s and ‘20s were gorgeous and beautifully produced, but look at an original Arthur Rackham watercolour and the colours’ vibrancy is unique. Likewise, E.H. Shepard’s work frequently has a texture that can’t be captured when reprinted; the snow scenes at the beginning of The House at Pooh Corner involved Shepard drawing in ink and then using a blade to scrape off a layer. Reproduced in black and white, it’s a wonderful image, but that original finish cannot be replicated.

First edition’s of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1970) and Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902).

I often read and listened to the audio tape of The Tiger Who Came to Tea as a child and hear you have an excellent anecdote about having tea with the author herself. Were there any visiting tigers..?

I was asked to visit Judith Kerr at her home. She was a wonderful old lady, rather diminutive but with alert sparkling eyes. As she pulled out drawer after drawer of her original artwork we discussed her inspiration for Mog (one of my childhood favourites) and then, of course, Sophie’s tea-time guest. After carefully returning all the artwork to their drawers, she asked whether I would like a cup of tea! It was a wonderful treat, although I wondered whether I ought to eat all the food in the house before drinking all the water from the taps… I was, I’m afraid to say, terribly polite, but then… so was the tiger…

Another fascinating story surrounds your presentation of the Siegfried Sassoon Archive to MPs in the Houses of Parliament. Could you tell us more about the circumstances around this event?

In 2009 Sotheby’s was instructed to offer the remaining archive of Siegfried Sassoon for sale. Various experts took control of different parts of the collection and I had the pleasure of cataloguing the poet’s manuscript diaries. These included diaries from the first world war trenches with appropriate splashes of mud. There was one obvious place that this material should go and Cambridge University Library agreed to a private purchase. A significant contribution to the purchase price was provided by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and, as part of their own promotion, they requested that parts of the archive be shown to interested MPs in the Houses of Parliament. I visited (in order to report back to Sotheby’s’ security about the safety of the exhibition space) and, after that rather pointless bit of red tape, my colleagues and I had the pleasure of showing off some exhibition highlights. It was remarkable to see many MPs experience jaw-dropping moments of realisation about the power of original manuscript material.

Finally, what’s the next exciting project in the pipeline – is there anything in particular you are looking forward to working on with Peter Harrington?

Where do I start? Peter Harrington has the motto, “Where Rare Books Live”. For the last few years I’d been beginning to think rare books were seriously ill, so it’s brilliant to join the team for whom rare books are living and important and electrifying. And, who knows, there may even be another bibliography that needs to be researched…

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