A co-operative [booksellers'] catalogue' entitled 'Detective Fiction: A Century of Crime: First and Early Editions'.

Forty-four pages, octavo, with two-page leaf of addenda loosely inserted. Four pages illustrating seventeen pictorial covers on art paper. In printed card wraps. A worn and creased copy of an influential catalogue, issued at a time when, as the introduction points out 'catalogues devoted to detective fiction [were] something of a rarity in the book trade'. 'We have permitted ourselves the indulgence here of including some fringe books [...] who can say that James Bond will not be better remembered in the 21st Century than Sherlock Holmes?' (Item 204 consists of nine Fleming firsts, including 'Casino Royale', for twenty-one pounds, with the comment 'the prices of these are likely we think to increase substantially in the years to come.....') According to his friend Anthony Rota (Books in the Blood, 2002) Harding-Edgar once quipped 'Book collecting is a disease and I am the doctor. It is a very expensive cure.'