I was in the library during my eighth grade year at Vassar. I was sick of the paperback drivel in the fiction section. Some kind of Sweet Valley High pabulum. I casually wandered back into the quiet stacks, away from the giggling cheerleaders flirting with the football players, away from the Science geeks and their chattering groupies (who were actually the closest thing I had to a social group...GAWD! I hated High School.) I meandered down the rows of non-fiction hardcovers to the one shelf that all the bindings matched. They were cloth bound. They had a comforting heft, these solid little books. Not quite the same feel as the worn and scrawny paperbacks. This shelf held a very attractive mystery. It was a complete edition of all of Shakespeare's works. I scanned the titles--what's a "Lear"? How can a king be a jet? I asked myself. "Hamlet"? Is that like an "omlette"? I picked up Antony and Cleopatra Hey! My mom just watched a movie with Elizabeth Taylor in it about this. Cool dress. And there was kissing. I'm all good with the kissing. Ah...the sweet innocence--little did I know what an obsession was about to start.
20 some Years later at a dusty antique shop in Depot Town,I saw on the floor, a misshapen and abused cardboard carton (I think it was a bananna box) stuffed with a very similar edition to the one that the VHS library housed.It was like seeing an old teddy bear, the same as the one you had as a child. Cloth bound and the right size. Each volume was about 1/2 inch thick and about 5X7. I asked the shop proprietor of the collection was complete? He claimed it was and to my delight my husband insisted we buy it. The copyright date was Oxford, 1923. That set of books is one of my prize belongings.
Hi. I am Day. I collect Antique books.
first editions
dusty musty faded ink,
old brittle pages
leather and gilt edged
marbleized endpapers,
...bookgeek.
