Modern Masters: Nick Harvill Los Angeles, CA

“I was studying for the bar exam in New York when I heard through a friend that Jane Stubbs needed part-time help. She had a gallery and bookstore on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she was having an opening—a big, splashy event, super glamorous. I started pitching in, and by the time I discovered I’d passed the bar, I was working as her gallery director. I know there’s a need for attorneys, but I’m glad not to be one of them.

I was always interested in books. I read all the time when I was growing up, much more than the rest of my family. The first great work of literature that captured my imagination was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. There was a really offbeat book I liked called Boy Wonder, which is a satire about the Hollywood scene. I’m fascinated by the social history of Hollywood, how it became such a central part of the world. There’s a great literary tradition in LA: Christopher Isherwood and his friend Aldous Huxley, F. Scott Fitzgerald moved here to write for the movies. That fascinates me, the connection between Hollywood and the literary world.

I’m not a big nostalgia person. If a book doesn’t relate to life today, then I won’t be so interested in it. But I love turning up things that are unjustly forgotten. People today put so much emphasis on the present without relating to what happened before. And I like beauty in books. I sell to a lot of people in the art and design world.

There’s a fun inscription from Helen Gurley Brown in the sale. Also the Olivia with the original drawing by Ian Falconer is great. That makes it so unique. Nancy Reagan’s I Love You Ronnie is the most significant book she could have signed because it’s the most personal thing she ever produced. The Ides of March signed by Thornton Wilder to Elsa Schiaparelli is another. I love that it connects two worlds: literature and fashion. Conrad Hilton signed The Silver Spade to his longtime butler. I love personal inscriptions like that. And in The World Is Full of Married Men, there’s a note from Jackie Collins with two photos. Every time she attended one of [agent] Ed Limato’s legendary Oscar night parties in Beverly Hills, she’d sign a book.”

What advice would you give to someone who’s just starting out?

The number one piece of advice is collect what you love, what you’re passionate about. That’s what will give you the most joy. Number two is pick something you think that from a financial perspective will pay off in the future. Be warned that if you have a passion for Jane Austen, unless you have very deep pockets now, you can’t touch that. That’s one of the top requests I receive, and successful film adaptations of her works have made her more popular than ever. Another thing to consider is the condition: Try to preserve it. Sunlight will fade dust jackets, and those are an enormous percentage of a book’s value. Also you need to keep books out of overly damp conditions to prevent mildew.

What was the first first edition you ever bought?

I can tell you one of the most interesting I bought. I acquired some books with Andy Warhol’s book plate, and in the very back of one of them, there was an address and telephone number written in black marker. The address sounded slightly familiar, on Driftwood. Well it just so happened that one of my friends bought Calvin Klein’s house on Fire Island, and it dawned on me this was address of the house where I was a house guest. So I went to Andy Warhol’s diaries and was able to pinpoint when he went to Calvin Klein’s beach house on Fire Island. Because of the sentimental connection to my friend, I kept that one.

Other favorites from the sale?

In the Russian Style, which is the only book where Jackie Kennedy let her name be put on the front. She normally preferred to use her influence behind the scenes. She was very private. Most of the copies of books she signed are to someone in her life, and this one is to a longtime Kennedy loyalist. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book is a fun first edition. It’s the English first edition, which contains the infamous hashish fudge recipe that got omitted in the American version. In bookseller parlance, it’s called a point: something that’s eliminated or changed.