I am just as surprised as anyone else by the current price of good secondhand copies of the UK edition of The Gentle Art of Domesticity. The book is now out of print, and unfortunately the original publisher has no plans to reprint it. The US edition is still available (in the UK, too) but for this the recipes were converted to US measurements and the text was lightly Americanised (whatever your view is on this - and I have a strong one - this is simply what happens sometimes, and the decision to leave alone/Americanise does not lie with the author). It also doesn't have the marshmallow heart on its cover, and it seems that this is something many people like.
So we are wondering what to do. Do we seek a new publisher? Do we publish it ourselves? Do we leave it alone, a one-off book with quite a back-story? Do we guard the few copies we own then speculate madly on the market? Do we wrap them up and save them for the next generation or two who may choose use them to light fires to toast heart-shaped marshmallows? You may notice I say 'we', as Simon is the driving force here. He doesn't like to see the book languishing when there is a demand for it (emails, conversations, price etc tell us this is so) and wants to do something about it it. I wonder. Maybe we should have a new (ad)venture?