November 2017

Burns’s 'Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect' (1786) has long been recognized as one of the world’s great books, but this study is the first modern attempt to track down how many copies of Burns’s first book still survive.  The 612 copies that were printed in the summer of 1786 on a wooden press by a local printer, John Wilson, in Kilmarnock, sold out almost immediately and launched Burns’s worldwide reputation.  In time copies of the Kilmarnock, often splendidly rebound to indicate its importance and growing monetary value, became prized by book collectors on both sides of the Atlantic.

The book opens with an introduction, by Allan Young, about the project and its findings, with a list of important “lost” copies, followed byPatrick Scott's account of how the Kilmarnock was published and how it became a collector's item. The main sections then describe the present appearance of each of the surviving copies, including any manuscript inscriptions or annotations, and trace, as far as possible, their previous ownership and its significance.  In addition, drawing on print and digital evidence from auction records, newspapers and memoirs, the study documents many copies for which there is now no known location, illustrating the larger story of public interest in Burns and Burns collecting from the early nineteenth-century to the present day.

Random Treasure is a true account of adventures in the world of antiques. Roger Stewart looks back on six decades of discovering lost and forgotten objects in second-hand shops and local salesrooms. Among many enthralling tales of exceptional items, the two stars are a pottery jug and a wooden statue, both masterpieces made five hundred years apart. It's been a profitable hobby too, with a 10 year tally of £250,000 in auction proceeds from objects bought for just £1,500. Random Treasure shows how to identify and authenticate antiques, how they rise and fall in value, whether provenance matters, and how real-life auctions work. There's also a light-hearted investigation of behavioural aspects of antique collecting, making the book a perfect read for those interested in popular psychology. What qualities are needed by enthusiasts to make spectacular finds? Does it require the connoisseur's expertise or the alchemist's magic, or can anyone succeed? And how can collectors prevent an innocent hobby from slipping into all consuming obsession and compulsion?