Venture Capital & Book Collecting: A Memoir Beyond Market Value

Jtsphoenix: Beyond Market Value by Annette Campbell-White was a very enjoyable book. I love books about books and this was no exception. Learning about her journey through the crazy world of book collecting was an absolute joy. Also seeing the correlation between her journey as a book collector and her journey as a venture capitalist really puts the book world and some of the insane prices books sell for into perspective. Would recommend to anyone who loves reading about the fascinating world of collecting books.

United States on Oct 06, 2020

kevin warner: For the enlightened as we realize that the web is muteable and changeable with out consent books represent a steady source of reliable information

Canada on Sep 08, 2020

Thomas Littler: Don’t let the title of this book—Beyond Market Value: A Memoir of Book Collecting and the World of Venture Capital—dissuade you from reading this author’s captivating story with collecting as the thread that brings together the various facets of her life: family, education, career, and health.

Having spent much of her childhood living in various Commonwealth Countries her experience was that schools only valued the education of boys, resulting in her turning to books for comfort and knowledge. When she later chose England as her home she took advantage of the access she had to London bookstores, spending much time carefully examining and reading books resulting in her first collectable purchase, the Ariel poems, T. S. Eliot’s “A Song for Simeon.” This choice eventually led to her collecting the books that Cyril Connolly identified as “The 100 Key Books of the Modern Movement” (American, English, and French). Over time collecting began to include ephemera, letters, photographs, and portraits. Each step of the way she explains her interests in these objet d’art and their importance in her life but never losing her connection to books.

Her years in...

United States on Mar 15, 2020

Christian Schlect: A well-written and thoughtful memoir by a successful self-made venture capitalist who has maintained her life-long love of good books.

Annette Campbell-White tells of her nomadic early life at the fringes of the British Empire; her struggles to succeed in a male dominated business world; her luck to ride the early wave of bio-medical device companies in California; and, most important, her dogged efforts at establishing a private collection of modern literature.

One of the best books I have read on the motivations of a pure collector.

(Befitting the subject, Tower Books of the University of Texas Press has done a superior job in the printing of this memoir.)

United States on Feb 25, 2020

sulis: Have you ever gazed in awe at a famous author's edits and comments scribbled all over an original manuscript? Then this book is a must! Annette Campbell-White, innovative biomed venture capitalist and founder of MedVenture takes you on an extraordinary journey through the dusty shelves of quirky secondhand bookshops to worldwide book dealers and auction houses to share details of the passion behind her literary collection of first and rare editions, manuscripts and authors' letters. Focusing initially on Cyril Connolly's 100 key books of the Modern Movement, she goes way beyond. Unusual discoveries include a raw exchange of letters between the Bloomsbury group's Lytton Strachey and Clive Bell, and rare photographs of E.M. Forster in India. Describing her early love of the War Poets, she honors Siegfried Sassoon's pacifist writings by sharing his original "Atrocities" compared with the censored version published in 1919. Even more poignant was her discovery after her father's death of his devastating WW2 diaries as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. Campbell-White describes the enhanced value of first editions that carry author's inscriptions, such as the sad, final ramblings...

United States on Nov 11, 2019

PRoy: Fascinating memoir. Well worth the read and coming back to over and over again. Highly recommended.

United States on Nov 07, 2019