The Dusty Bookcase: Robert Barr: My Modest Collection

12 November 2026

Robert Barr: My Modest Collection

Robert Barr at his desk at The Idler
McClure's Magazine, November 1894

If Canadian Grant Allen really was the "busiest man in England," as he claimed, might his contemporary Robert Barr have placed second? Allen produced fifty-two books in his fifty-one years, whereas Barr managed only forty-six in his sixty-three. On the other hand, Barr also worked with friend Jerome K. Jerome as editor of The Idler, easily one of the very finest magazines, literary or otherwise, in Victorian England. I spent a pleasant afternoon last weekend with its March 1894 issue.

The cover image is by English painter Hal Hurst, one of eight – eight! – he made for the second instalment of Vernon's Aunt, a new novel by daughter of Brantford Sara Jeanette Duncan. It's followed by an uncollected Robert Barr short story titled 'Two of a Kind.'

Grant Allen makes an unwitting appearance in illustrator Scott Rankin's series 'People I Have Never Met.'

Barr returns to make a brief, yet persuasive argument in the magazine's regular feature, 'The Idler's Club.'

'Twas an enjoyable reading afternoon.

I purchased my first Robert Barr book, a first American edition of his 1909 novel Cardillac, in 1991 while hunting through the basement of a Plattsburg, Vermont bookstore. Price: US$2.00.

My second, Barr's two-volume travelogue The Unchanging East (1899), came in the early days of eBay courtesy of another Yankee bookseller. Price: US$6.00.

Years of hunting at London, Ontario's Attic Books yielded an extremely fragile unbound copy of his 1899 novel Jenny Baxter Journalist published in Toronto by Copp Clark.

I don't know what to make of it. The paper is so cheap and fragile that it was all I could do to take the photo above; I dare not read it. Price: $5.00.

At Attic, I also found the 1973 University of Toronto Press edition of Barr's 1907 The Measure of the Rule, the one novel he set in Canada. Price: $2.00.

Strange to think – strange to me, anyway – that the most I've ever paid for a Robert Barr book went to print-on-demand vulture Dodo for its reprint of Revenge! At over one thousand dollars, the Chatto & Windus true first is well beyond my reach.

Chatto & Windus, 1896

The most expensive Barr currently listed online is From Whose Bourne, Etc, published in 1893 by Chatto & Windus. Price: $1454.00. Had I the money, the Barr I would buy is a copy of the 1908 Appleton American first of Young Lord Stranleigh once belonging to Edith Wharton (with her signature). Price: $1100.00.

Not all volumes are so expensive. An Isle of Wight bookseller has listed a copy of his 1905 novel The Speculations of John Steele at £2.50.

I've found the United Kingdom a rich hunting ground for inexpensive Canadian books. This year alone, I've purchased obscurities by Louis Arthur Cunningham, Doris Hedges, Isabelle Hughes, Edward McCourt, Margaret Murray Robertson, Arthur Stringer, and Alan Sullivan. No matter the quarry, I always make a point of searching the seller's listings for Barr before completing the order. There's often something to be had for under six quid, hence my scattershot collection.