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Floor Plan |  |
The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - DW's Library
Dennis Wheatley's Library - his family's books and his own books
DW’s special set of his own works
- Blackwell’s Catalogue item one
Click on the image to enlarge
The copy of 'The Forbidden Territory' from the specially bound set
Separately, DW's copies of two omnibuses
which contained specimens of his work
(Note - DW's dates in the long inscription in 'A Century of Horror' are wrong !)
DW of course had copies of his own books in his possession.
Pride of place was taken by a set uniformly bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe in blue crushed Levant morocco with ornate gilt decoration, and dustjackets bound inside where required.
The set included the typescript of his book published in Arabic under the sponsorship of the Foreign Office, ‘Of Vice and Virtue’, and the copy of ‘Who Killed Robert Prentice’ had within it the un-torn original of the torn up photograph.
The copy of ‘Saturdays with Bricks’ had bound within it Winston Churchill’s letter accepting the dedication.
This set formed Item One in Blackwell’s sale catalogue, and had a price tag of £4,500.
As Phil Baker confirms, the set was bought by Anglophile billionaire Sir John Paul Getty II for his Wormsley Library.
His Library disposed of it in November 2012, when it was auctioned at Christies in London; it went for a hammer price of £16,000 (£20,000 net).
DW also kept copies of his wife’s books, and those of his step-son William Younger (a.k.a. William Mole) alongside the numerous books given to him by his friends and other relatives, some of which have been described in earlier pages.
References : Phil Baker, Chapter 49, notes to Chapter 38
Provenance : DW's special set - Private Collection
'A Century of Horror Stories' with thanks to Richard Humphreys
The Spy's bedside book - a separate private collection
