Anne of Green Gables
Aug. 14th, 2012 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerMy grandmother died earlier this summer, and the family - on the grounds that I was the only one likely to read them - let me abscond with some of the old books from her bookshelves.
The Montgomerys - these are my grandma's folks - seem to have stopped buying books in about 1920. There's a sorry story, here, I think, a once-prosperous family just barely hanging onto the farm as farm prices fell in the twenties.
Tragedy aside, it's convenient for me that they should have so many books that fall exactly within my time frame. I sorted the shelves, puffs of dust rising, and skeins of old spiderweb draping over my fingers and attaching themselves to my shirt. They had the books packed two deep in the bookshelf. I set the first layer up in precarious stacks, praying, don't fall, because some of these books were old enough that a slip would be the death of them.
And in that second rank of books - tucked in the shadows at the back of the shelf - I found my treasures:
The Montgomerys - these are my grandma's folks - seem to have stopped buying books in about 1920. There's a sorry story, here, I think, a once-prosperous family just barely hanging onto the farm as farm prices fell in the twenties.
Tragedy aside, it's convenient for me that they should have so many books that fall exactly within my time frame. I sorted the shelves, puffs of dust rising, and skeins of old spiderweb draping over my fingers and attaching themselves to my shirt. They had the books packed two deep in the bookshelf. I set the first layer up in precarious stacks, praying, don't fall, because some of these books were old enough that a slip would be the death of them.
And in that second rank of books - tucked in the shadows at the back of the shelf - I found my treasures:
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-14 01:56 pm (UTC)I have a copy of "Heidi" from the late 1880s (I don't have the book in hand so I can't check the exact date but it's OLD!) that is the prize of that collection.
Plus my parents have for me their entire collection of FIRST EDITION Rudyard Kipling books. All of them. I don't know where they got them, but those books are staying in storage until I settle down and have a safe place to display them.
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Date: 2012-08-14 02:10 pm (UTC)Is the family name a coincidence?
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Date: 2012-08-15 12:54 am (UTC)Your grandmother's Anne books are beautiful! I've never seen any others that even come close.
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Date: 2012-08-15 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 12:19 pm (UTC)And I bet you could make a stack on those first edition Kiplings if you ever need to - though of course letting old books out of the family is always a hard thing.
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Date: 2012-08-15 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 12:49 pm (UTC)And I'd never sell. I mean... hell... I have a baseball signed by the greatest baseball team in history (1927 Yankees) that I inherited from my grandfather. Like the Kipling books it's in storage til I have a place to display it.
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Date: 2012-08-16 10:08 pm (UTC)Those are such beautiful old books! I love them! :)
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Date: 2012-08-17 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-17 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-18 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-18 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-20 02:01 am (UTC)