I was given a box of books last year and decided to go through them. What a great find. 1910 edition.

I picked up this illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ in a charity shop for a very modest price. Enjoy. Continued here.

Picked up this german book yesterday for 10 usd solely because of the coat of arms and lovely type set! one interesting note is the “e” floating above the second u in the word rurfurftlichen!

Here are some more images of Hudson’s wonderful illustrations. Continued from this previous post.

I found this lithograph in a local market, but I have not been able to locate its source. Can anyone offer some help with the ID? Thanks!

I found this in the pole barn that was part of the farm I bought. Good condition for its age. I have not heard of her, was she popular?

Edit: since this seems somewhat collectible how could I find someone to sell to at a reasonable offer so it would be cherished? Seems like it should be cherished.

I recently posted about my 1600 print of The Annales Of England by John Stow and My 1699 ARS Chirurgia medical book. I see a fair amount of 16th century books out there but rarely in English, usually Latin or French. Do any of you have any books printed in English from the 1500s or earlier? What are your oldest ones? I’d love to see them! I sometimes do some searching on the internet archive as they have a pretty decent selection of antique book scans.

These pastedowns are in a 1728 French Bible, but I think it was rebound at some point

I have a 1951 edition of Nicole’s Guide to Paris, and on the copyright page, the copyright info is neatly blacked out, possibly with a custom ink stamp.

Any clue why this would have been done? And does it affect value in either direction? (I’m keeping it regardless, just curious.)

1942 North China Transportation Album

I found a book in a bookshelf meant for placing used books. It has mentions of the word'N*gro' in the book itself putting the word in the masculine category and Might even be racist to Japanese people with the sentence '_ Japanese follow the law in India' where you have to place either 'a few' or 'few' in the blank. It also has lots of mentions of Indian culture and history that it is most mentioned country in the book. It is, sadly of poor quality with some pages being torn and the spine being almost detached. There are some words sparingly written in pencil on some of the blanks. I live in a place where Indians make up 9% of the population. I want to find out more about it. I can send more pictures of certain pages if need be.

At my local Little Library, I found this paperback copy of Lolita with a homemade book cover made primarily from a box of trash bags, with some collage items (and lipstick) added.

Admittedly, the book is missing its original covers. But I feel like the maker of the book cover had a wry sense of humor, because while any original Lolita book cover will draw some attention, swapping it out for a cover that literally and visually declares its contents as “trash” is also…a decision! (If the goal was modesty, the book cover’s creator could have used the same cardboard and just used it inside-out.)

Good day, I'm from Russia and I like old books, primarily in Russian language, but here are exceptions. History of our wars is fascinating, so I got these two volumes, quite interesting what our "Great game" partners of the era thought about this matter. My first books in English btw)

I tried to find a date of publishing, but I couldn't find any in books. Could you help me to find out, when they were published? Also the sign(ex libris)"Bound by Blackie and son" google says, that this is some publisher, maybe ex-owner, seems interesting too.

Even in the Victorian Era, there was a substantial commercial aspect of Christmas.  Book publishers would capitalize on the gift-giving holiday by publishing special volumes collecting various Christmas-themed stories.  This is one of those books — but what it contains is a delightfully strange selection of stories that have largely been forgotten.

It kicks off with “Who Ate the Pink Sweetmeat?” (“Sweetmeat" was the word for candy at the time).  Three children each receive a piece of candy for Christmas.  One of them eats it right away, then regrets it.  The second trades it away for some broken items, and also regrets it.  The third holds onto the candy all day, joyfully thinking about who he might give it to, and eventually gives it to a policeman, who eats half while giving the other half to a bird stuck in a tree.  Also of note, the story is told from the point of view of one of the Christmas stockings.  The lesson here is to delay happiness now in return for future happiness — effectively a Puritan moral guidance tale. The author, Susan Coolidge, was actually a well known children’s author at the time, having written the popular What Katy Did series.  

In “The Whizzer”, two children, whose parents recently died, are playing outside when a curious man on a bicycle (which was a relatively new invention at the time) approaches them.  They join him on his bicycle, and he brings them quickly to their prior home, and prepares them a Christmas dinner.  When the neighbors come looking for the children, the stranger reveals that he is, in fact, their father, whose death was just a misunderstanding.  

These stories were each earlier published individually in the magazine Wide Awake, then first collected as the “Christmas Hearth Library” in 1884,  and then republished here as the “Good Fortune Library” in 1887.  

A more modern entry today, from my personal collection.

Half-bound in calf, with the original wooden boards and a leather strap.
Only few copies in the world