Index reveals popular first edition novels have seen value double

Animal Farm, Ulysses and James Bond books have all seen price hikes, but The Great Gatsby remains most valuable

If you own an early copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, James Joyce’s Ulysses, or even a James Bond novel such as Casino Royale, it is not just your mind that might be enriched. A new price index of first edition 20th century popular classics reveals how values have more than doubled over the past 10 years.

Stanley Gibbons, the London dealer better known for stamps and coins, will launch a Rare Book Index of 30 first editions this week, mostly by British authors but including cult American classics such as JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

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