Old Books

I love shopping for old books in charity shops and stuff. I've been at home for the past couple of weeks and have spent my days roaming around (well, driving badly around) little country villages which have a lot of antique shops in them. I found an amazing one today that had lots of antiquarian books in them - a lot of old Bibles from the 1700s all leather-bound and falling apart, a fascinating 'History of the British Navy' from the early 1800s (the final chapter on the 'future of the navy' particularly made me laugh as it discussed the problems of rigging... I think that is no longer a problem), a beautiful two-volume leather-bound Complete Shakespeare from again the 1800s (costing £260! Yikes.), a four-volume 'Motorcar Owners Manual' from the 1920s... I could have spent a lot of money. :-)

I already own a c.1920s Shakespeare collection and today I almost bought a poetry book with poems from 'Chaucer to the present', the present being 1852 but I ended up with something more modern.

It's a c. 1910 copy of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species':



I've been meaning to read it for a while so now I can! Anyone else a fan of old books and fancy sharing?

Awesome!

Wow, FC, that's great. I like old books also and found three in my dad's collection of books.

1. 'A Dictionary of Poetical Quotations' by Henry G. Bohn that dates from the 1860s.

2. A copy of 'Dowling Arithmetic' published in 1768.

3. 'The Gardeners Kalendar' (yes that is how it's spelt in the book) published in 1752. This one is particularly interesting because it has a handwritten inscription. "The gift of Will. Pallisor Esq, to Leonard Morrey, Rathfarnham, 17th Aug, 1754."

Nice find FC! I'm very jealous.

I love old books, but own very few. I've got a few older (1900-1930) Grade School text books, which I find very interesting.

My favorite by far though is a book titled "With The Men Who Do Things". My grandfather gave it to me years ago when his eyesight started failing, along with all his poetry books. I can't remember the year it was printed

I'd grab pictures of them all, but I can't get at them currently Crutches & confined spaces don't mix Soon as I get clearance from the Dr. to put weight on my cast, I'll get some pics and add them to this thread

Oh wow CK! I'd love to have a chance to read through "Dowling Arithmetic" and "The Gardeners Kalendar". Both of those sound very interesting.

I have to admit, I'm jealous!

My sister is the one that gets into old books. And I mean REALLY into them--she collects them the way I collect rocks.

One time she was at a garage sale, and she found this book. It's the history of the county I grew up in--and by history, I mean everything from "people first moved in" (it was a swamp; not exactly somewhere the natives frequented) to "During the Manhattan Project". It includes a lot of information on births, deaths, marriages, and the like, property ownership..the thing is massive. And there are ab out 6 of them on the planet. People tend to get defensive of them. The guy at the garage sale actually refused to sell my sister the book until she provided references--and the main thing that convinced the guy (and I'm not kidding) was when he found out that our grandfather, who owns one copy, let my sister turn the pages.

CK - the ones with inscriptions are the best! They just make the history of the book that much more real. I found a Bible that just had two women's names in it with dates beside them. I don't know if it was mother-and-daughter or not (as the last names were different) but one was from the 1850s and the other the 1870s.

IM - what on earth have you done to yourself?! I'd like to see the pics but don't break yourself further to get them!!! What sort of poems does the "With the Men Who Do Things" have in it? It sounds fascinating.

Dinwar - I'll confess, my grasp of American history is dreadful so I had to Google the 'Manhattan Project' but the book sounds amazing. Just how thick is it?! I guess a county in America is a small area... but possibly larger than English counties?

IMagius wrote:

Oh wow CK! I'd love to have a chance to read through "Dowling Arithmetic" and "The Gardeners Kalendar". Both of those sound very interesting.

Yeah, I was having a look through them and the Dowling Arithmetic is particularly fascinating. It's all about mercantile arithmetic and talks of exchange rates between English pounds and Venatian ducats and 'grotes' and 'half-grotes'.

ForeverCrimson wrote:

CK - the ones with inscriptions are the best! They just make the history of the book that much more real. fascinating.

Absolutely, it's a little bit of social history that makes you wonder about the people, who they were, etc.

LOL ... just stepped wrong while working in the yard

"With the Men who do THings" isn't poetry ... it's actually the story of a kid (late teens) taking a summer to get some life experience in & around New York ... during which he works at a variety of odd jobs - sand rat(tunneling), high rise construction, etc.. it all takes place around the turn of the century (I think) but it is also written with "technology" in mind, so there is a fair amount of detail about the different projects he works on.

Quote :

Just how thick is it?!

It's a few inches thick. It doesn't cover a huge area (I forget how large the county is, but it's no more than 30 miles across or so), but it's still on very thin paper. To be honest, my memory is a bit fuzzy--I've only seen Grandpa take it out twice, once when he got it and once when my sister was looking through it.

So I went back to one of those little old bookstores today and found that old poetry book still there and this time I just couldn't resist... So now I have a beautiful little book of English poetry from "Chaucer to the Present" published in 1859 - just nine years after Wordsworth died. There's hundreds of poems in it, arranged thematically (Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, the months, morning, noon, evening, night and many more themes!). I love it!

Just thought I'd share

Oh wow, I would love that.