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Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable: Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting
As any, even vaguely addicted book collector will have swiftly learned, most booksellers' catalogues are written in a parallel language that can fool anyone but the 'cognoscenti' and which makes the mysteries of the Rosetta stone, or Linear B, look like something out of Enid Blython. Without a smattering of inside information, the baffled but hopelessly-bitten book buyer is drifting unarmed and unprepared into a minefield whose perilous complexities will usually only be made plain when an eagerly awaited parcel of dream volumes arrives and mangled contents are revealed in all their deceptive glory.... But all is not lost. Help is at hand! After a lifetime of avidly scanning the frequently poisonously-tinted pages of innumerable book catalogues, Ronald Searle has become expert in the art of decoding those esoteric, poetic and usually approximate, descriptions of literary come-ons. Now, licking his wounds, he publishes his hard-earned findings in this fully illustrated pioneer guide, designed to foil the devious machinations of scheming and wicked booksellers for ever more. No longer will the innocent book collector need to puzzle over the finer meaning of 'old half road', 'good working copy', blind tooled', or 'tail-edged shaved'. The unvarnished truth is here exposed at last, both in the shocking explicit drawings and in the devastatingly frank glossary whose revelations will startle even the most battle-scarred of bibliophiles. The result is one of the funniest, most entertaining books to have emerged from the brilliantly perceptive pen of the master. No book collector, and certainly no bookseller, can afford to be without it - even the wicked ones.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1989
159 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Searle
177 books32 followersRonald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is an influential English artist and cartoonist. Best known as the creator of St Trinian's School (the subject of several books and seven full-length films). He is also the co-author (with Geoffrey Willans) of the Molesworth series.
He started drawing at the age of five and left school at the age of 15. In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the Royal Engineers. He trained at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, currently Anglia Ruskin University, for two years, and in 1941, published the first St Trinian's cartoon in the magazine Lilliput.
In January 1942, he was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle. He spent the rest of the war a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. The brutal camp conditions were documented by Searle in a series of drawings that he hid under the mattresses of prisoners dying of cholera. Liberated late in 1945, Searle returned to England where he published several of the surviving drawings in fellow prisoner Russell Braddon's The Naked Island. Most of these drawings appear in his 1986 book, Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945. At least one of the drawings is on display at the Changi Museum and Chapel, Singapore, but the majority of these original drawings, approximately 300, are in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, along with the works of other POW artists.
Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s, including drawings for Life, Holiday and Punch. His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle. He compiled more St Trinian's books, which were based on his sister's school and other girls' schools in Cambridge. He collaborated with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books (Down With Skool!, 1953, and How to be Topp, 1954), and with Alex Atkinson on travel books. In addition to advertisements and posters, Searle drew the title backgrounds of the Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder film The Happiest Days of Your Life.
In 1961, he moved to Paris, leaving his family and later marrying Monica Koenig, theater designer and creator of necklaces. In France he worked more on reportage for Life and Holiday and less on cartoons. He also continued to work in a broad range of media and created books (including his well-known cat books), animated films and sculpture for commemorative medals, both for the French Mint and the British Art Medal Society.[2][3] Searle did a considerable amount of designing for the cinema, and in 1965, he completed the opening, intermission and closing credits for the comedy film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. In 1975, the full-length cartoon Dick Deadeye was released. Animated by a number of artists both British and French, it is considered by some to be his greatest achievement, although Searle himself detested the result.
Searle received much recognition for his work, especially in America, including the National Cartoonists Society's Advertising and Illustration Award in 1959 and 1965, the Reuben Award in 1960, their Illustration Award in 1980 and their Advertising Award in 1986 and 1987. In 2007, he was decorated with France's highest award, the Légion d'honneur, and in 2009, he received the German Order of Merit. His work has had a great deal of influence, particularly on American cartoonists, including Pat Oliphant, Matt Groening, Hilary Knight and the animators of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. In 2005, he was the subject of a BBC documentary on his life and work by Russell Davies.
In 2010, he gave about 2,200 of his works as permanent loans to Wilhelm Busch Museum Hannover (Germany), now renamed Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst. The ancient Summer palace o
He started drawing at the age of five and left school at the age of 15. In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the Royal Engineers. He trained at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, currently Anglia Ruskin University, for two years, and in 1941, published the first St Trinian's cartoon in the magazine Lilliput.
In January 1942, he was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle. He spent the rest of the war a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. The brutal camp conditions were documented by Searle in a series of drawings that he hid under the mattresses of prisoners dying of cholera. Liberated late in 1945, Searle returned to England where he published several of the surviving drawings in fellow prisoner Russell Braddon's The Naked Island. Most of these drawings appear in his 1986 book, Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945. At least one of the drawings is on display at the Changi Museum and Chapel, Singapore, but the majority of these original drawings, approximately 300, are in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, along with the works of other POW artists.
Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s, including drawings for Life, Holiday and Punch. His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle. He compiled more St Trinian's books, which were based on his sister's school and other girls' schools in Cambridge. He collaborated with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books (Down With Skool!, 1953, and How to be Topp, 1954), and with Alex Atkinson on travel books. In addition to advertisements and posters, Searle drew the title backgrounds of the Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder film The Happiest Days of Your Life.
In 1961, he moved to Paris, leaving his family and later marrying Monica Koenig, theater designer and creator of necklaces. In France he worked more on reportage for Life and Holiday and less on cartoons. He also continued to work in a broad range of media and created books (including his well-known cat books), animated films and sculpture for commemorative medals, both for the French Mint and the British Art Medal Society.[2][3] Searle did a considerable amount of designing for the cinema, and in 1965, he completed the opening, intermission and closing credits for the comedy film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. In 1975, the full-length cartoon Dick Deadeye was released. Animated by a number of artists both British and French, it is considered by some to be his greatest achievement, although Searle himself detested the result.
Searle received much recognition for his work, especially in America, including the National Cartoonists Society's Advertising and Illustration Award in 1959 and 1965, the Reuben Award in 1960, their Illustration Award in 1980 and their Advertising Award in 1986 and 1987. In 2007, he was decorated with France's highest award, the Légion d'honneur, and in 2009, he received the German Order of Merit. His work has had a great deal of influence, particularly on American cartoonists, including Pat Oliphant, Matt Groening, Hilary Knight and the animators of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. In 2005, he was the subject of a BBC documentary on his life and work by Russell Davies.
In 2010, he gave about 2,200 of his works as permanent loans to Wilhelm Busch Museum Hannover (Germany), now renamed Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst. The ancient Summer palace o
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
April 25, 2015
"I have never ceased to rummage wherever more than two books are brought together."
Amen.
Amen.
May 1, 2012
A wonderful collection of drawings inspired by booksellers' jargon. One of my aunts was thinking about cleaning out her house and asked me if there was anything I wanted. I told her that I'd love to have this book and some time later it arrived in the mail.
I hadn't noticed before but, when I opened it today, I saw that my aunt had written an inscription on the inside cover: "To Paul, I am all of these"
The joke is in the bookseller's language: Slightly foxed - but still desireable; Dented at head; Generally a little loose; Cracked, but holding. You get the idea. Finding the inscription made the book even more of a treasure.
I hadn't noticed before but, when I opened it today, I saw that my aunt had written an inscription on the inside cover: "To Paul, I am all of these"
The joke is in the bookseller's language: Slightly foxed - but still desireable; Dented at head; Generally a little loose; Cracked, but holding. You get the idea. Finding the inscription made the book even more of a treasure.
March 9, 2018
Mr Searles' ilustrations are superb. Book collectors and readers will love the book dealers terms that have been deliciously transformed to a whole new meaning.
Highy recommended
Highy recommended
December 20, 2015
A genius play on words – a joke on bookseller's jargon and a collection of hilarious drawings. Searle has created a marvelous little book that belongs on any book collector's shelf.
February 15, 2022
Ronald Searle's deliciously offbeat humour makes the driest of dry jargon lists (those used to describe vintage / retro / old / second-hand books) a delight. His sense of word play (not to mention horse, cow and dog play!) and his drawings combine to create a light-hearted feast.
November 26, 2015
This is the book that your friends who read -- and collect -- books deserves. Ronald Searle writes about those of us who collect books, and helps to untangle the terms that some booksellers use to wheedle the money out of our wallets with obscure, obtuse terms. The drawings are all marvelous, and at times quite a hoot. Yes, there is a glossary provided at the end, with tongue firmly planted in cheek. You may recognize the author as the illustrator of The Compleet Molesworth, a satirical look at life in an English public school. Happily recommended, five stars overall, and not to be missed.
For the longer review, please go here:
http://personapaper.com/article/42427...
For the longer review, please go here:
http://personapaper.com/article/42427...
August 6, 2018
A Treasure for Book Collectors
I saw this book a few weeks ago at Shakespeare and Company (Paris) in the 2nd floor display area. Alas it was not for sale, but I sat down in their big comfy chair, read it through and decided I had to have my own copy. It's out of print, but I have a small sub collection of self referential books (ie: The Book on the Shelf, This Book Needs No Title) and so a used book on used books was just too appropriate to resist!
The book is a whimsical collection of Ronald Searle cartoons illustrating a somewhat literary if not literal interpretation of terms used by booksellers relating to the condition of their wares. The drawings have a light spidery feel. "Old half roan" shows the front half of a horse, small flies buzzing around his nozzle, the back end transforming into a book suspended in midair, the pages bristling in the breeze. "Evidence of some insect damage" shows two colourful bugs, one chewing on a page, the other tearing at a book and gleefully swinging a mallet at it. In this and in other images small bookworms smile with cartoonish teeth, eating their way through small holes in the book.
At the end of the book is a nice little glossary explaining what each of the terms actually do mean, with the odd editorial comment woven in.
My own copy was in good condition (ie: pages slighted coloured by age) library binding (intact dust jacket, plastic cover, sewn thread binding, not glue). Though shipped from Chicago it originally came from a small library in Oakville just 30 miles away from where I live. It was neither barked, nor shaved, and it did not come with running titles.
Highly recommended if you are the type who likes to prowl old book shelves or are even the slightest perplexed in deciding which amongst the descriptions of several used copies is fit to select while shopping online.
I saw this book a few weeks ago at Shakespeare and Company (Paris) in the 2nd floor display area. Alas it was not for sale, but I sat down in their big comfy chair, read it through and decided I had to have my own copy. It's out of print, but I have a small sub collection of self referential books (ie: The Book on the Shelf, This Book Needs No Title) and so a used book on used books was just too appropriate to resist!
The book is a whimsical collection of Ronald Searle cartoons illustrating a somewhat literary if not literal interpretation of terms used by booksellers relating to the condition of their wares. The drawings have a light spidery feel. "Old half roan" shows the front half of a horse, small flies buzzing around his nozzle, the back end transforming into a book suspended in midair, the pages bristling in the breeze. "Evidence of some insect damage" shows two colourful bugs, one chewing on a page, the other tearing at a book and gleefully swinging a mallet at it. In this and in other images small bookworms smile with cartoonish teeth, eating their way through small holes in the book.
At the end of the book is a nice little glossary explaining what each of the terms actually do mean, with the odd editorial comment woven in.
My own copy was in good condition (ie: pages slighted coloured by age) library binding (intact dust jacket, plastic cover, sewn thread binding, not glue). Though shipped from Chicago it originally came from a small library in Oakville just 30 miles away from where I live. It was neither barked, nor shaved, and it did not come with running titles.
Highly recommended if you are the type who likes to prowl old book shelves or are even the slightest perplexed in deciding which amongst the descriptions of several used copies is fit to select while shopping online.
October 30, 2021
Having enjoyed The Illustrated Winespeak: Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Winetasting and loving a Folio, it seemed like the fates had aligned when we spotted this lovely book in a second hand bookshop.
This time Ronald Searle gives his unique take on the ludicrous phrases that can be overhead in the book world. With his usual panache he turns these into outlandish characters, each of which will bring a smile to the reader's face.
An enjoyable read. 4 1/2 stars.
August 21, 2023
Obviously dated, published for a very specific audience, and demonstrating that Searle was at least a bit of a perv, this book contains some mildly amusing, way-inside-joke illustrations based on bookseller catalog terms. The illustrations are completely overshadowed, in my opinion, by the Glossary at back which reads as something of a "The Devil's Dictionary" for book collectors.
If you must have a copy, please consider: https://bookshop.org/p/books/slightly...
If you must have a copy, please consider: https://bookshop.org/p/books/slightly...
February 8, 2022
One star for how the book felt in my hand and the aesthetic; one star for the whimsy and book-loving-ness. Minus one star for its gender portrayals, minus one star for being almost inaccessible in its specificity (though the glossary at the end was nice), minus one star for my ambivalence about it all (admittedly not the book’s fault).
December 25, 2019
Opening lines: ‘Ever since as a child I lurked, lingered and slobbered in anticipation over their sixpenny book boxes of the Cambridge booksellers, I have never ceased to rummage wherever more than two books are brought together.’
April 3, 2021
3.5 Stars
I find myself wondering what Norman Thelwell's take on this would have been...
I find myself wondering what Norman Thelwell's take on this would have been...
June 18, 2023
I'd hoped for the Folio Society edition but with the same page count and even the same colour endpapers (!) I can't really complain. An amusing collection of typically Searle drawings covering the odd jargon of book descriptions for collectors...
August 21, 2025
A clever series of single-panel cartoons that jokingly illustrate common terms associated with the sale of used books. Think Amelia Bedelia. There are some obvious ribald illustrations but nothing scandalous. There's also a glossary in the back to help understand the specialized terms.
December 30, 2018
Wonderful illustrations born of booksellers' comments. Very well done. Highly enjoyable.
March 18, 2019
Delightful!
April 27, 2020
Cute. Makes learning the terminology not stuffy.
July 5, 2020
Cartoons providing humorous fictitious definitions of the odd phrases included in antique book descriptions. Very punny.
August 10, 2020
Fabulous illustrations and funny captioning. Not being a librarian or book collector, some of the meaning escaped me, but a great book none-the-less.
August 24, 2022
Humorous. Endearing.
A fun little read for book-lovers who are no stranger to purchasing used books.
A fun little read for book-lovers who are no stranger to purchasing used books.
April 15, 2016
Mr. Searle has gifted the reading public with his witty and irreverent musings and illustrations for many years now. As a possible companion piece to his book The Illustrated Winespeak: Ronald Searle’s Wicked World of Wine Tasting, this one pokes decided fun at the obfuscating, frustrating and baffling domain of book selling and book buying. As a devoted bibliophile who’s been lured into buying a book sight unseen and opening the box only to reveal some musty, worm-ridden “treasure” fit only for the rubbish heap, Mr. Searle has been burned more than once and this naughty book both gives you an insight to what many of those obscure terms mean and takes a decided swipe at those sellers whose advertised wares definitely didn’t live up to their promises.
There is a helpful partial glossary in the back that states what the terms really mean. But it’s by no means complete and contains its own share of irreverence. Caveat emptor, indeed.
There is a helpful partial glossary in the back that states what the terms really mean. But it’s by no means complete and contains its own share of irreverence. Caveat emptor, indeed.
March 13, 2012
He had me at the title and hilarious cover of this one. Such a witty and wonderful man, Ronald Searle! His work influenced several generations of illustrators. It bears up well in comparison to just about any of the greats.
September 2, 2011
I can't believe I forgot to add this most wonderful of books, one of my prize possessions when I was an active used/rare bookdealer. So clever, so apposite, so funny.
February 28, 2012
The late New Yorker cartoonist Ronald Searle on the argot peculiar to used book sellers, with appropriate illustrations. Glossary included.
September 29, 2012
One of the funniest books - fiction or non - that I've ever read. However, one must love books to appreciate.
November 25, 2015
Wicked. Be warned.
April 13, 2016
Very narrow audience, but anyone that loves holding an old book will get more than a few laughs out of it.
July 23, 2016
A hilarious compendium of outrageously literal (and often rather smutty) reinterpretations of common book catalogue descriptions. I actually laughed till it hurt.
July 11, 2010
Clever - lots of book collecting terms, mostly funny play on words.
February 19, 2012
RIP Ronald Searle.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews