Richard Gordon – collection or not

Suzie Eisfelder

Am I collecting Richard Gordon? It’s such a good question and I really don’t know. Let me ramble on about him for a bit and we’ll see where I end up.

Starting with a search on Wikipedia, it’s the first place I go to when researching authors. A very interesting search it brings up a list of 10 people with this name, my Richard Gordon just happens to be the first on the list although the other nine people have done interesting things including being an astronaut.

The man I’m talking about was actually born Gordon Ostlere on 15th September 1921. He was a trained surgeon and anaesthetist, writing several medical books under his own name. Richard gave up the medical profession in 1952 to focus on writing. I remember his books from my childhood as a couple of them were made into movies with the gorgeous Dirk Bogarde (more about him another time) and with a TV series following. Doctor in the House was first published in 1952 and is the story of Simon Sparrow’s beginning at St Swithin’s hospital. This book was autobiographical and I believe parts of the others were also based on his own life. The earlier books are fine but the sexual innuendo increases dramatically as the characters age.

On my shelf (in no particular order) the following titles can be found:

Doctor in the House
Doctor and Son
Doctor in Love
Doctor at Large
Bedside Manners
Doctor in Clover
Doctor on the Boil
Doctor in the Nest

Bear in mind I’ve been reading Richard Gordon for a good deal of my life and there are 25 books listed on his Wikipedia entry. Also bear in mind a sale I made the other month to someone who was collecting Richard Gordon. The buyer was looking for several of his books and I ended up raiding my bookshelf to help them out. On the other hand since that sale I bought the last two books on the list with the intention of putting them up on the website for sale but somehow they found themselves onto my bookshelf. I’d like to know how that happens as one of them was actually in one of my boxes and still ended up on my shelf.

I hope you now understand why I’m not certain if I’m collecting them. I’d like to as he is a really good author but on the other hand (how many hands have I got here??) I have so many books on my bookshelf that many of them are double stacked making it that much harder to find specific titles. Please don’t suggest I buy more shelving as the only space for it is on the ceiling. One day I might measure my shelves and scare myself silly with the measurements – although that would make a good blog post. Hmmm, let me dwell on that idea for a while. While I’m dwelling on thoughts for other blog posts I’d really like your comments on this as to whether you think it’s a collection.


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