Beschreibung:

(Paul H., bookseller) Catalogues, No.[2]-45 bound in 2 vol., the second vol. signed and inscribed by Paul Edwards to Michael Max dated Sept. 1985 on front free endpaper, illustrations, modern half green calf, spines gilt, original wrappers bound in, 1969-85; Catalogues, No.7-116, an almost complete run (lacking only No.40, 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 64, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77 & 79), No.116 (the final catalogue) was never issued, some with items marked, original printed wrappers, 1972-96; and a bundle of other related material including a marked typescript of the first catalogue (numbered 692), a reprint of No.1 in red wrappers, the Sheffield Railwayana Auction catalogue of the Edwards collection in May 1997 with prices in manuscript, photographs of the auction and the order of service for his memorial service, 8vo & folio (sm. qty) *** "A large number of the books in my collection were bought from the late Paul Edwards In my early days as a railway book collector I decided that I wanted to acquire an example of every Great Western Railway sales publication as listed in the check list in Appendix 1 of Robert Burdett Wilson's Go Great Western: A History of GWR Publicity. Progress was comparatively slow at first but, in 1972, I was referred to Paul who had a burgeoning secondhand book business concentrating on railways, steam vehicles and canals. My first purchase from him was from cat. 7 in 1972. Apart from a brief gap from 1977-79 when he moved to Balsdon Hall, Lavenham in Suffolk new catalogues were issued every three or four months. Increasingly, as my collection grew, I realized that specialist booksellers' catalogues were an important reference source for the collector and we agreed that we would have two sets of his catalogues bound - one for Paul and the other for me. Owing to the difficulty in assembling two complete sets of later catalogues we managed to bind only the first two volumes. Paul generously gave me his marked 'shop copy' of his first foolscap, duplicated catalogue to complete my run and later arranged for cat. No.1 to be reprinted. In the early 1990s it was realized the Paul's lovely wife, Elizabeth, was suffering, whilst still in her fifties, from dementia and Paul was very much involved in looking after her. Then, in May 1996, he told me that he had been diagnosed as having an inoperable tumour in his brain and not long to live. He was very concerned that his personal collection of railway books and other railway related items was properly disposed of in an orderly way and wanted me to oversee the disposal. That meant, he said, that I had to familiarize myself with his collection and his very basic catalogue which was merely an alpabetical list of titles and numbers. For the first time in all my visits, I was invited into his private office where he began to show me the astonishing range of books, posters, jigsaws, sheet music, juvenilia and children's books and other material that he had collected since childhood. Paul had already arranged for his business stock to be removed from Balsdon Hall for auction by his good friend Ian Wright of Sheffield Railwayana Auctions and told Ian that he wanted him also to dispose of the private collection. Ian told me of the arrangements he was making for an auction to take place at The RAF Museum and caused me some concern when he revealed the date as 10th May 1997. At this point I had not even started to realize my retirement ambition to catalogue my own collection and there I was with the monumental task of cataloguing Paul's collection. Many long days were spent at Balsdon Hall cataloguing, lotting and putting the books in boxes with provisional lot numbers. I remember taking all the sheet music with bibliographic reference books with me to France on a ski-ing holiday, in order work on it when not on the slopes. Fortunately all the hard work paid off and the sale was a great success. This small collection has been not only a bibliographic tool but also a poignant reminder for