Nick Jeffery: Rowling Library Titles

Chris Calderon sent me the question, “How many titles can you spot in J.K. Rowling’s new color coded personal library collection?” The link goes to the Rowling tweet in April, one she made during the first Covid Lockdown in the UK. I had corresponded with Nick Jeffery and others at the time and I vaguely remembered that he was working on identifying as many titles as he could. I shared Chris’ question with Nick, he shared his remarkable findings, and I asked for and received permission to post them here.

After the jump, then, Nick Jeffery’s list of the identifiable books in the Rowling bookshelves as of her April, 2020, tweet. In addition, Nick shares his compilation of identifiable titles from the 2000 Bloomsbury Goblet of Fire Adult Edition book cover photo, a discussion we had here — with much less success – in August 2019: ‘Name That Not Quite Legible Book Title! The Mysteries on Rowling’s Bookshelf.’ The Jeffery lists do not allow us to add these authors and titles to the Literary Likes List, but they are suggestive and encouraging, believe me, for Serious Readers of Rowling-Galbraith.

Thank you, Nick! Everyone else — prepare to be astonished and delighted. Enjoy — and please do share the titles you have identified, as well!

The April 2020 Tweet Library Book List: Sixty Five Titles, Twelve on Literary Likes List

  • Folio Society limited editions:
London and New York
Door in the Wall, H. G. Wells
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabalais
Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
The Canterbury Tales
  • Folio Society:
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Restoration London, Liza Picard
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh 
Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales
Famous Trials
The Odyssey
The Selected Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Homes
Strangers on a Train, Patrician Highsmith
The Murder of Roger Aykroyd, Agatha Christie
The Iliad 
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
The Singing Sands, Josephine Tey
Maigret in Society, George Simenon
The Comedians, Graham Green
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Get Shorty, Elmore Leonard
I Robot, Asimov
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
Mr Lear, Jenny Uglow
Miss Marple Short Stories, Agatha Christie
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
In Parenthesis by David Jones
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Loving by Henry Green
  • Barnes and Noble collectors editions:
F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic Works
Gray’s Anatomy
Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe
  • Canterbury Classics Leather:
Bulfinch’s Mythology
Seven Novels, Robert Louis Stephenson 
Mark Twain
The Art of War
The Divine Comedy, Dante
Le Morte d’Arthur 
  • Harper Collins collectors edition
Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
  • General Editions:
The Murder Room, P. D. James
Morality, Jonathan Sacks
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvais
Behind the Black Door, Sarah Brown
Toast on Toast, Steven Toast
The Political Animal, Jeremy Paxman
Holy Dread, James Lee-milne
Slammed, Colleen Hoover
Nancy, Adrian Fort
The Confession of Brother Haluin, Ellis Peters
The Last Diaries, Alan Clark
Kiss me Chudleigh, Auberon Waugh
Decca the Letters of Jessica Mitford
Khrushchev, William Trueman
Circe, Madeline Miller
Lost in the Funhouse, John Barth
Overture to Death, Ngaio Marsh
Pryor Convictions, Richard Pryor
Mutual Contempt, Jeff She’ll
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson 
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Complete Chinese Horoscope by Kwok Man-Ho, Sunburst Books.
The 2000 ‘Back Cover Author Photo in Front of Bookshelf’ List:
Thirty Four Titles, Seven Authors on Literary Likes List
Jane Austen by David Nokes
The Complete Book of Mother and Baby Care by Elizabeth Fenwick
‘A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicholas Poussin’ by Richard Beresford
Unknown by Susan Reynolds
Unknown by Interpet Publishing
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
The Oxford Companion to Military History edited by Richard Holmes 
Towards Zero by Agatha Christie
Parker Pyne Investigates by Agatha Christie
Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie 
Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie 
Home Truths by David Lodge
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor
Into the Looking Glass Wood: Essays on Words and the World by Alberto Manguel
Jane Austen’s Letters by Deirdre Le Faye
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Adrian Mole the Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend
Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin 
Peter Cook a Biography by Harry Thompson 
The Claudine Novels by Colette
Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie 
Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie 
Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie 
Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious by Freud
Young Heroes of the Bible by Kirk Douglas 
Unknown by Tim Winton
Unknown by Ngaio Marsh
The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E. A. Wyke-Smith

Comments

  1. Steve Morrison says

    “Bridesmaid Revisited”: shouldn’t that be “Brideshead Revisited”?

  2. Yes! I fixed it — though the typo was funnier, no?

    Thanks for the catch!

  3. David Llewellyn Dodds says

    Splendid work – thank you, Nick Jeffery, for compiling it, and both for passing it on!

    Various of those spines have clear evidence of reading, too (unless she buys or otherwise receives books second-hand which someone else has read, or loans some out before reading them herself… admitted everyday possibilities).

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