Stuart Campbell describes his passion for book collecting and how he manages to buy a first edition of Treasure Island in The Scottish Book Collector.
‘It is clearly outrageous to pay £1500 for a book: the Gross National Product of a small country. And what do you do when you’ve got it? You can sniff it, pat it, gingerly open it. This gingerly opening it soon degenerates into neurotically checking that the tiny crease on the back endpaper had not in fact been made worse by every small gingerly opening. A sense of anti-climax too. The world hasn’t changed by dint of possession. The book may provide a temporary respite from the more pressing domestic and professional anxieties. But already the pleasure is fading…‘