Clarissa

Having failed to find a reading copy of 'Clarissa' in Charing Cross Road, once the place where you could be almost sure to find such a book, and having declined to buy the loose volumes available on eBay, I widened the search to the Isle of Wight.

First stop, the Ryde Bookshop, a place where I have made a number of satisfactory purchases in the past, some Soviet or Russian flavoured. Nothing doing on this occasion, although I did get a reading copy of the contemporary and slightly slimmer 'Tom Jones' and some more Dostoevsky stories from the Foreign Languages Publishing House, lately of Moscow. To join the one or two other books I already own from the same house.

Second stop, quite by chance, Babushka Books of Regent Street, Shanklin. Where, as well as having a shop full of secondhand books, the chap there also does new frames and old typewriters. He thought he had had the four volume edition of 'Clarissa' from Everyman that I wanted quite recently and he could not remember selling it. Not in its proper place. But while I poked around upstairs, he turned it up downstairs and I now the proud owner of a comfortable reading edition of 'Clarissa'. Once the property of the London School of Printing, since which time it has gone through three metamorphoses, first into the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades, second into the London College of Communication and third into the University of the Arts London. This last presumably a companion university to our own University of Creation at Epsom.

I find I am more or less at the end of Volume III, so about three quarters of the way through. With the letter 362 I had been on, Clarissa to Mrs. Norton, becoming letter CXXXIII. Thinner paper than the Penguin, which means that the book stays open at the right place without needing to hold it open. On the other hand, it has discoloured a little, now a very pale yellow.

Expedition rounded out, after a visit to the famous chine for a sausage sandwich, with a visit to the Co-op by the bus station, where I was able to buy some more cherries - which looked very like those from Morrisons - and some thick sliced white bread, the alternative being baguettes, not convenient on this occasion. Fried egg sandwiches to follow.

PS: the books are almost certainly a set, all bought at the same time, and they have been kept together, but for some reason time has not treated all the reds the same. They do vary slightly, and it is not just a trick of the light or the telephone.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-hunt-for-two-seas.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/clarissa.html.

Reference 3: https://www.ryde-bookshop.co.uk/. Ryde.

Reference 4: https://www.facebook.com/lovebabushkabooks. Shanklin. No proper website that I can find.