Treasure from 1809

At the last book sale I attended, I was fortunate to discover a little treasure from 1809. It is a survivor, worn and separated from its companion volumes, from the Regency era: a book, by Miss Maria Edgeworth, Volume II of "Tales of Fashionable Life".

I cannot explain to you the thrill, for me, of encountering a genuine piece of Regency life. This book might have been read by one of my characters! (For I do visualize my characters as real Regency people.) This book was held by a person wearing a silk gown and a cap, or jean half-boots, or a tail coat and pantaloons. It might have been read in post-chaise, or a drawing room, or the Bath Pump Room. My mind reels with the possibilities.

The printer is Wood and Innes of Poppin's Court, Fleet Street

It is a small book--4 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches--with worn brown marbled covers and a brown leather spine and corner caps. The pages are foxed, and there is that indefinable old book smell that intoxicates book collectors. It is certainly legible, and no pages are missing.

Of course an antique such as this has been through many hands, and the people who owned the book are nearly as interesting as the book itself. Inside the front cover of my treasure is this inscription:

I discovered that Ormiston Hill is in Kirknewton, Fife, nearby Edinburgh. It is also known as Black Cairn Hill. Ormiston Hill House was a 17th century building, home of the Wilkie family. It was replaced after 1851 by Ormiston House in the Scots Baronial style. I know nothing more of Miss Margaret except that she owned this book!

And one more survivor--tucked into the pages of the book is a calling card. It is certainly Victorian, but I have no expertise in dating such ephemera.

I feel that it might be 1860's or 1870's, but I have no basis for that other than the look of the artwork. It surprises me that there is no 'Miss' before the name, and the name itself is interesting; an unusual spelling of Charlotte, I believe.

I wonder what Margaret and Sharlet thought of Miss Edgeworth's stories. Did they have all three small brown volumes? And if so, when did the other two volumes become parted from this one?

An antique book tells two stories: the one printed on its pages, and the other--more mysterious--of its travels, and its owners.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Old Books and another Book Sale

Well, my local symphony society had another fund raiser--a book sale. And I am a big fan of book sales, as you know. This was a small sale, but I picked up several bargains--some fiction, a history of the Netherlands, and the second volume of Phillippe Aries History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World. My Regency find however was a Dent Everyman's Library compilation of Nelson's Letters, published in 1960. It's a compact little volume but has 470 pages of letters.

I was disappointed that there weren't many old books in this sale. I love old books--the older the better. I like their smell, their yellowed pages, and their worn, crumbling spines. When I'm researching Regency England, I look for books that are pre-war, preferably pre-World War I. They have an innocence and charm about them that reaches back towards the years of that other war, the Napoleonic one. And the pictures--photos or drawings--often show scenes that have since disappeared.

"The King's England: Sussex" is one such book. Part of a large series by Arthur Mee (41 volumes in all) subtitled "A New Domesday Book of 10,000 Towns and Villages" it is a gold mine of illustrations and stories, pre-1937. I would love to find more in this series.

Another Dent book "The Old Country: A Book of Love & Praise of England" was written in 1917, specifically for those longing for 'home-thoughts'. My edition is from 1922. The selections are undoubtedly sentimental, but nonetheless charming, and the illustrations, mostly by A. R. Quinton and Herbert Railton, are in some cases stunning. Chester Cathedral by Railton is below.

 "The London of George VI" by E. O. Hoppe, a Dent book from 1937, has dozens of photos of a city now much changed. An evocative picture of the dismantling of the 1817 Waterloo Bridge resonates with this Regency researcher.

A favourite book of mine from 1941 is English Country Houses by V. Sackville-West. It is a very personal reflection on the great houses of England, many of which have disappeared in the intervening seventy-two years. The last sentence of this brief 47 page monograph is prophetic:

The system was, and is, a curious mixture of the feudal and the communal, and survives in England to-day. One wonders for how long?

This quote speaks of Regency England also. Did any of our favourite fictional Regency characters wonder how long their world would continue unchanged?

For photographs of the English countryside, I have old books like About Britain No. 10: The Lakes to Tyneside (1951), National Trust Guide: Places of Natural Beauty by D. M. Matheson (1950), and the Country Life Picture Book of the West Country (1952). The photographs in these books echo the beautiful paintings and drawings of Regency artists, and draw us closer to a world now vanished.

I live in the 21st century; I am an electronically published author, and I use an e-reader. The electronic resource Google Books is one of my favourite research tools. But my house is filled with books, and it is the old books, particularly, to which I turn again and again.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Research books I've just discovered!

I've been to a book sale again. There are two substantial sales in my city each year, one in the fall and one in the spring. They support arts, education and charity, so I feel fully justified in buying from them, even though we have no space left in our house for more books!

One of my first finds was "From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children's Literature to 1850". I am looking forward to exploring it, as early children's literature is for me a fascinating study. I will be interested to see what the book says about the Regency era.

The majority of books that I buy at these sales are out of print, so I feel no guilt about 'cheating' the author of his/her royalties. But occasionally I break that rule. I came across "The Gentry: Stories of the English" by Adam Nicolson, which I had not seen before. It was published in 2011, a hardcover book, and cost me only $2.00. It looks like an exceptionally interesting book, and perhaps I can report further on it when I've read it. I'd like to do something for Mr. Nicolson, having paid him no royalties! Even the picture I can provide of the cover is from Amazon.ca; perhaps someone among you will buy it there, and assuage my guilt :)

I had three exceptional finds of very old books. I love the really old ones, dilapidated though they may be. They are redolent of history, of lives lived, and of the people who held them and thought about their contents.

"The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer" by Samuel Smiles, published in Boston from the Fourth London Edition in 1859 was a choice pick at $5.00. Stephenson's work basically changed the world, and as I flip through it Regency names pop out--Humphry Davy and James Watt among them.

"The Mother's Friend" edited by one Ann Jane was published in London as volume VIII in a yearly series. It bears no publication date but mentions the Battle of Alma, one of the main battles of the Crimean War. So I think a publication date of 1854-55 would be reasonable. It is a pious little book, for dutiful women, and I hope it brought them comfort during undoubtedly hard times.

My prize is "View of Ancient and Modern Egypt" by the Rev. Michael Russell. It was published in 1831 only twenty-some years after Napoleon's visit, and speaks of the new archaeology undertaken. Complete with its original fold out map this is a little gem.

I find it interesting how small these old books are--only four inches wide, and with a miniscule font that must have challenged poor lighting and rudimentary spectacles.

For the rest: I got two volumes of the Oxford History of English Literature--English Literature 1789-1815 and 1815-1832, which promise to be very useful. I picked up "The Art and Architecture of London" from 1988 for $2.00. It is organized by district which I thought might be very useful, and it is heavily illustrated. I got the classic "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi" in a nice edition for the same price; it looks to have masses of information on English theatre during the Regency.

And finally, a nicely illustrated book published in 1950 titled "The History and Architecture of Brighton". I am a fan of anything about Brighton, so I snapped this up for $2.50.

I brought home some fiction as well, one or two books on gardening, and some maps and guide books for places I haven't visited. All in all it was an excellent sale. Now I just have to find places on the groaning shelves for my new treasures!

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Yet another book sale!

There are two important book sales in my city every year. One is held as a fundraiser by the Symphony Society in April, and one is held by the University Women's Federation to raise money for scholarships, in the autumn. Both go on my new calendar in January, and I try never to miss either.

This week it was time to attend the CFUW book sale. And I found some gems. My prize was published in 1827! That means a Regency person actually wrote this book, and other Regency people handled and read it. That leaves me speechless...well, almost speechless. I haven't been actually speechless (according to my brother) since the first showing of Star Wars in 1977.

My 1827 book is volume III of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by Edward Earl of Clarendon. This history became quite a classic and excerpts from it have reprinted in various forms since its first publication. But this is an 1827 book--lovely rag paper, uneven handcut pages and a board cover. Inside in a clear, lovely script, in sepia ink is inscribed 'Belonging to the New Market Library No. D [or P?] 3'. Also inside is a penciled $75.00. Did this come from some antiquarian bookseller at one time? I paid $l.00 for it! A set of the original 7 volumes is priced at $1800 on abebooks.com

I obtained another very old book--one hundred years old, in fact. The Annals of the Strand: Topographical and Historical was written by the prolific E. Beresford Chancellor, and published in 1912 by Chapman & Hall Limited. This is a wonderfully informative book with some great period illustrations and two glossy foldouts of very early engravings.

My daughter discovered for me a copy of a book I had long heard of but never seen--Memoirs of a Highland Lady 1797-1827 by Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus. I'm looking forward to reading this; it is full of the day to day minutiae of a Regency lady's life. It was first published in 1898; mine is a 1972 John Murray edition.

I was glad to find The English Scene, subtitled In the Works of Prose-Writers since 1700. It is a 1941 Batsford book, and seems to contain a fascinating selection of excerpts by writers as diverse as Smollett and D.H. Lawrence under sections titled The Manor, The Village, The Road, etc. The dust jacket on my $1 copy is not as handsome as this one; mine has a large chunk removed of the river!

Among my other purchases of fiction and non-fiction was a little book titled The London of George VI. It was published by Dent in 1937 and contains "Sixty-six Photographs and Descriptive Notes of London Scence to-day, with Routes from Piccadilly Circus". It's a wonderful view of London before the Second World War.

I must mention a purchase of more recent manufacture--1983--a slim book titled "Skye Remembered". With a name like McLeod, how could I turn down this book? It's full of historic photos of the Isle of Skye, in the main from the 19th century. 

Now I have to look forward to the next sale, in April of 2013. Thank goodness for antiquarian bookstores to fill the time 'til then!

Next week, my friend Jana Richards will be visiting and offering us a change of pace and an insight into her World War II research for her romantic fiction. Please join us!

Jana Richards has tried her hand at many writing projects over the years, from magazine articles and short stories to full-length paranormal suspense and romantic comedy.  She loves to create characters with a sense of humor, but also a serious side.  She believes there’s nothing more interesting then peeling back the layers of a character to see what makes them tick. You can reach her through her website at http://www.janarichards.net

Don't you just love a book sale?

I've been to a book sale! Our symphony society does a fund-raising book sale each April, and it is a treasure trove of the unusual and often unattainable. And the prices! All the books below were $1.00, $1.50 and $2.00.

Except for Moule's County Maps: The West of England, which was $4.00. Which is still a fair price, considering this is a 9" x 12" hardcover with 48 pages and 19 full colour maps of the Britiain of 1836.

I already owned the complete County Maps of Old England, also by Moule, but The West of England version has two more town maps--Southampton and Exeter. For $4.00, how could I go wrong?

Then there was English Antiques: The Age of Elegance 1700-1830 by Donald Wintersgill. It is a 1975 publication, but right on target, datewise, and this kind of information never goes out of style.

French artist of the Revolution, Madame Vigee Lebrun has always been a favourite of mine, and when I spotted her Memoirs, translated in 1903 by Lionel Strachey, I snapped it up.

I got lucky also with books on English architecture. The Handbook of British Architectural Styles by David N. Durant is a nice compact little volume with delightful pen and ink drawings and a wealth of invaluable detail. And for every style it discusses it includes "Where to see examples"--very helpful for travelers.

A nice little Country Life book on Victorian Churches by Peter Howell caught my eye. It is part of their RIBA drawings series and is a good addition to my other books on English churches.

An obscure volume titled Local Style in English Architecture published in 1947 rounded out the architectural books. It is subtitled "An Enquiry into its origin and development" and has a serious, scholarly bent, but it's also stuffed with period photos, maps and drawings.

I was lucky enough to find two facsimile editions of interesting books, originally published almost exactly one hundred years apart.

Flora's Lexicon: The Language of Flowers by Catharine H. Waterman was originally published in 1860. It includes some unusual plants, and some poetry by long-forgotten poets.

The Compleat Housewife by Eliza Smith was first published in 1758 and makes fascinating reading. There is a Publisher's Note on the Contents page that made me smile: "Remedies and Cures included should not be used as they could be dangerous and a threat to health." No doubt they will find their way into my blog, or my tweets!

My prize for the day was published in its second edition in 1911. The first edition was 1898. Entitled Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire by Richard Blakeborough, it was published by W. Rapp & Sons Limited of Saltburn-by-the-Sea. The title page proudly stated that it includes 'A GLOSSARY of over 4,000 Words & Idioms NOW IN USE'. This book appears to have been reprinted several times in the past hundred years, but my version is the original red cloth hard binding with the author and title picked out in gold on spine and cover. It cost me $15.00, but it's in wonderful condition, and I adore really old books.

I am working on listing all my research books (and a few other titles) on Goodreads these days--in the hope that they may be of interest to other Regency aficionados and researchers. You can visit my Goodreads here--I would be delighted to be friends with you. My 'bookshelves' are in the left hand column, and they are filling up as I have time to add titles.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Oh, I love a book sale!

I've been to a book sale! Used books, I must admit--no author royalties paid unfortunately--the only down-side to an otherwise sublime experience. What is better than three or four hours spent trawling among shelves and shelves of books? And if the money didn't go to the authors, at least it went to a good charity--our local symphony society.

I started the afternoon by finding a biography of George IV--our own Prinny--by Joanna Richardson. I had not come across this bio before; it is titled 'George the Magnificent' with a copyright of 1966. It should prove interesting in relation to the other biographies of the Prince Regent in my collection.

I moved on to discover a Penguin book--'The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier'. This is a memoir by a German conscript Jakob Walter, and looks very interesting. So little first person information is available about the common soldier of the era; it was satisfying find.

Then I found several nice little hardcovers of Jane Austen's work which will probably end up as prizes in my website contest. Likewise a good fresh used copy of the 1995 out of print book 'Landscapes of Britain'.

A real treat was a lovely hardcover titled 'Beningfield's English Villages'. Gordon Beningfield's luminous paintings are an inspiration and a joy.

"Great British Families' by Debrett's has some excellent illustrations, and with chapter titles like 'New Men' and 'Whig Magnates' promises good reading. 'Victorian and Edwardian London'  by A. R. Hope Moncrieff, although not Regency-related, looks packed with information. I paid $3 for it; I think that was a good deal! Nearly everything was only $1-$2, only a little more for extra special finds.

Loosely related to the Regency were my purchases of "Disraeli" by Stanley Weintraub; a massive tome of some 700 pages that looks terrific, and a 1953 edition of Washington Irving's 'The Sketch Book'. To round out my historical reading, I found--illustrative of the other periods of history that interest me--'A Medieval Family: The Pastons of 15th century England' by Frances and Joseph Gies and, 'In a Gilded Cage: From Heiress to Duchess' by Marian Fowler about the American heiresses who married British aristocrats in the late 19th century.

I've only recently discovered Canadian author Marian Fowler. I highly recommend her biographies, all written in the 1980's and 90's. I don't know if she is still writing, but her work is delightful--impeccably researched and sparkling prose. I just finished 'Below the Peacock Fan' about the ladies of the British Raj, and discovered that I have her biography of 'Blenheim'--yes, the house--on my shelves.

My purchasing was rounded off with a couple of novels by some favourite contemporary authors of mine, Erica James and Katie Fforde. I bought a book called "Cross-Stitch Florals" though I don't have time to undertake another project. If I do though, these ones are great! I got a book of Edward Thomas' poetry and discovered a series called the 'Small Oxford Books' which is delightful. I bought their 'Hotels and Inns', 'The Country House', and 'The Pleasures of the Table'. Each book is a compilation of quotes, from all eras of history, about the title topic. Great bed-time reading!

'The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs' from 1977 completed my purchases. This is a very funny book and does relate to the Regency or at least the Georgian era with this offering from Walter Savage Landor:

The Georges
George the First was always reckoned
Vile, but viler George the Second;
And what mortal ever heard
Any good of George the Third?
When from earth the Fourth descended
(God be praised!) the Georges ended.

It was a great day at the book sale. My purse is empty and my book shelves are full so it's fortunate that it comes only once a year. But I have reading material now until it comes around again. Oh, wait, there is the University Women's Book Sale in the autumn...hmmmmm.....

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne