Many moons ago, in the late 1980s, when my locks were black and my journalist’s uniform was jeans, joggers and a turtle-necked sweater, I made my way through Richard Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh countryside every weekend. This is the world’s largest second-hand bookshop with over a million books available at any one time.
With a group of four sub-editors from Birmingham, we would work the Saturday night shift – that being our off-day – as ‘casuals’ on ‘The Financial Times’ in London, pick up over 200 pounds in cash after tax and then armed with some magic lubricants for the train ride, we would ‘roar’ towards Richard Booth in County Powys, Wales, early in the morning. That was the first time I made a few purchases of some rare books on Lahore, most of them leather-bound and at amazing prices. Those books have always stood me well as I research my way through various versions of the history of our city. But then when my two girls grew up I managed to get them interested in this pastime, and we would scan the markets around Anarkali, along the road past Government College and Law College, up the lanes towards Paisa Akhbar, trying some delicious food in the process. Then my two ‘buddies’ left and now with my friend Saifullah Khalid, an amazing collector of rare books, and I keep in touch with what is available. Rest assured there is a gold mine out there.
Lahore has always had a thriving second-hand book market. If you read Kipling’s ‘Kim’, you will find a mention of these bookshops in Anarkali over 150 years ago. In the days of old there is considerable mention of second-hand bookshops outside the courtyard of the Wazir Khan Mosque on Kashmiri Bazaar inside Delhi Gate. There is also mention of ‘calligraphers’ rewriting books, and of leather bookbinders. Most people of the old walled city still remember with nostalgia the ‘four-anna bookshops’ that existed in almost every ‘mohallah’. Ustad Daman, that great Punjabi poet and sage, used to spend his time working at one such place in Tibbi Bazaar near his home, which was the original house of the Sufi poet Shah Hussain of Madho fame.
In this time and age most young people get up late on a Sunday, in the process they miss out on the utter joy of spending time searching for rare and interesting old books in the side streets of Anarkali, along Nila Gumbad, Government College, Law College and the road between them. It is an amazing world, which, let me assure, a lot of people still enjoy. Let me take you through the last one month’s achievements that Saifullah has managed, for he is, undoubtedly the king of this world of second-hand books. I will not mention the gems that stack every corner of his house, for once the level crosses shoulder height, his wife, so the rumour goes among friends, his wife warns him of dire consequences. So he builds another room and shifts them there, only to compile more.
Just two weeks ago he picked up an amazing leather-bound original first print of ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ by Henry Rider Haggard. Printed in September 1885 by Cassel & Company. This was part of his famous Quatermain series, and also contains the rare and mysterious Quatermain map printed on special paper in screen. This map alone, only 4,500 of them were printed at its launch when London newspapers described the book as “the most amazing book ever written” (imagine!!), last year auctioned at Sotheby’s for 3,250 pounds. Saifullah picked up this original leather-bound first edition for an amazing Rs300 only. I would say this was ‘the most amazing purchase ever made’. The price on the book says three shillings, which was expensive in 1885.
Just for the reader’s interest, the book certainly made waves when it appeared, and was one of our comic favourites. But if followed a book by Joseph Thomson titled ‘Through Masai Land’, published in January 1885. Many critics even then thought that Haggard had plagiarised Thomson’s story adding his own experiences in Africa. But it had literary merit, and the ‘map’ originally printed is now part of the legend. Imagine finding this rare book below a stack of rejects in an old Anarkali shop. The shopkeeper was probably happy to see it sell, for he had picked it up three years ago when a retired colonel’s children sold their late father’s ‘raddi’. To each his own world.
The next ‘kill’ for Rs200 was an original print of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, printed in 1888 by A.H. Wheeler & Co. of Allahabad, India, United Kingdom. I would have bought it for the print line alone. This is about the famous James Brooke, the first white Rajah of Sarawak, Borneo (now Malaysia). He set off on a search for Kafiristan looking for the lost armies of Alexander. Ironically, as a student I trekked there and found an original sling cannon still existing. I hear it has been dismantled and removed by some ‘high up’.
My best buy almost three months ago was ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ – 12-stories. The original stories were printed in ‘The Strand’ magazine between 1891 and 1892. In October 1892 the famous publisher George Newness Limited printed the 12 stories in a rare 14,500 print order. Millions followed that first order. A rare copy of that book, again in leather, existed in the Kinnaird College Library. Someone sold a lot of such rare books from the library and I managed to buy this ‘pearl’ for a mere Rs150. I sent Sotheby’s an email and they priced it at 1,700 pounds plus. Not bad.
But the book that I have an eye for is the original English translation version of ‘The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy’, printed by the Colonial Press Company, London, in 1893. The bookseller wants Rs1,500 for it, and I am stuck on Rs300. He will break I am sure, unless some reader reaches him first with a better offer.
The world of rare books and reprints have a fascination all their own. In Lahore there are a number of second-hand bookshops that have sprung up in the Gulberg and DHA markets. This is a positive development. These shops need to be explored, and exploration needs long hours. That is why, all over the world, these bookshops do their best business on a Sunday.
In old Lahore this is a culture all its own, and one can find poets, writers, professors, researchers, hacks like yours truly, and other readers who find book prices beyond them silently searching for that ‘rare kill’. As you read these lines, I will probably be among the many trying to get the bargain of a lifetime. Anyway, I need that rare Tolstoy edition badly.