The Library of Alan Clodd

Being offered for sale by Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London.

The library of the late Alan Clodd is one of the most celebrated and extensive private collections of modern literature, assembled over some fifty years and totalling some 20,000 books, many of the highest quality.

For an appreciation of Clodd's life, please see the Independent newspaper's obituary of him, and for The Bookdealer's notice of the first catalogue, which includes a discussion of his collecting activities. Where individual collections within the main body of the library achieve or come close to definitive status they are to offered for sale en bloc, and his James Joyce, A.E. Housman and 1890s holdings have already been placed. Among author collections yet to be sold are his astonishingly good T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Isherwood, and Siegfried Sassoon. Please contact us for further details of these.

There will also be a series of individually priced catalogues of books and manuscripts. The first, Dolmen, Heaney, Yeats and Others and second, Against the Grain and its expanded version The Whole Grain have already been issued. Future catalogues will include mixed Prose Writers, Poets and Illustrated Books. Although primarily a book collector Alan had extensive manuscript collections, including Kathleen Raine, W.S. Graham and David Gascoyne, which will be offered separately.

At the end of the process, we hope to publish a comprehensive catalogue of the Clodd library, available for purchase as a reference book.

All offerings will initially be by catalogue only, and please write to Joe McCann at Maggs (joe@maggs.com) to be added to the mailing list. Shortly after each catalogue's publication, the books will be posted on the internet, at www.clodd.com, and the usual collaborative booktrade databases.