Modern First Editions

Due to the relatability of Modern First Editions to so many people, along with the often relative availability of many 20th century first editions, it is perhaps no surprise that this has become one of the most highly popular and prolific areas of rare book collecting. With rare first editions often making the headlines (and not just for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone...), the market for Modern First Editions has gone from strength to strength over the years, and with every emerging generation new collectors appear on the scene. It is therefore also a very competitive rare books sector.

At Forum Auctions, our Modern First Editions department focuses on the broadest practicable range to appeal to the interests of a variety of collectors, with entry-points to allow for collectors of Modern Literature at different levels to engage and experience the thrill of bidding successfully on a first edition they would cherish forever. We have achieved amazing auction prices for first editions by key modern fiction writers such as Kingsley Amis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Harper Lee, George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf, to name but a few.

Genre Fiction First Editions at Forum Auctions

Beyond the big-ticket, "blue chip" authors of modern literature, our team of Modern First Editions specialists also share a healthy interest in the various gleaming facets of genre and subgenre fiction. This of course includes that perennially popular area of rare book collecting, Detective Fiction. Authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers and P.D. James ensure that this is a high-profile aspect of Modern First Editions, with important and early key works by such authors being highly sought after. However, there is also strong interest in the lesser known authors, particularly from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and these can have the most wonderful dust-jackets.

Other areas of genre fiction with a strong fanbase among Forum bidders include Science Fiction (works by authors such as H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Ursula K. LeGuin and Philip K. Dick), Fantasy Fiction (notably J.R.R. Tolkien, whom we do share with our Children's Books dept), Horror Fiction (M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Dennis Wheatley and Stephen King, for example) and Weird & Supernatural Fiction (including Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson and Dion Fortune).

Modern First Editions of Poetry

Modern Poetry is another popular and collectable area of Modern Literature, with more recent poets' works becoming increasingly sought after. First editions in dust-jackets of works by the War Poets, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin and John Betjeman always attract strong bidding. More modern poets such as Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes are also becoming very collectable in first edition, especially when signed or inscribed.