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Yesterday's afternoon's accidental treasure find (found indoors, no less- not in the dirt!)
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,215 ✭✭✭✭✭
Yesterday afternoon, I was picking up some coins from my antique mall booth downtown, to take home for imaging. I had our five year old daughter Victoria with me, as I'd just picked her up from preschool. She needed to use the restroom, so I took her back there, and she made me stand outside the door. As with most men waiting outside a ladies' room door, I had little to do but fidget, but I noticed some shelves a few feet away, in the vintage bookseller's booth, and one particular volume caught my eye.
It was Warren's Stories From English History, and it had some eye-catching designs on the cover.
I opened it to see when it had been published, but before I even got to the title page, some interesting old inscriptions and grafitti in India ink on the flyleaf leapt out at me.
Apparently the owner of this book had been a young man by the name of Edward Semple Moale, and young Edward had made some fascinating schoolboy doodles on the endpaper and flyleaf. First, he signed his name, with flourishes. Then he had a go at his initials, in old Norse runes, apparently! Then there was the date, 1907, in huge numerals, and below that, a whimsical skull and crossbones and a skeleton, the first warning "Beware!" and the second beckoning, "Right This Way!", while standing next to a sign reading "To (DTH? Death?)"
I was immediately captivated by the thought of Mr. Moale signing his book, exactly a century ago. I wondered if he was an English schoolboy of the Edwardian period, and a member of the generation that produced J.R.R. Tolkien. That would explain the runic writing. Tolkien had a fascination with old runes, and it would not surprise me to see another English boy of his generation writing them.
As a member of that generation, I wondered if Mr. Moale had later followed his beckoning cartoon skeleton, "to death", in the trenches of the Great War, where most of that generation's lifeblood had been squandered? Or had he lived to a ripe old age, and traveled to America, bringing the book with him? How did the book end up on this side of the pond?
Turning the flyleaf to the title page, I saw the book had been on this side of the Atlantic all along. It was published in 1904 in Boston, Massachusetts, by the publisher D.C. Heath & Company, and the author's full name was "Henry P. Warren, L.H.D., Principal of the Albany Academy". It apparently was a book on British history from 55 BC to 1901 AD, intended for American youth. It's a little too colorful to have been a school primer or textbook, though- something tells me those would have been much more dull and dry than this.
So our young Edward was an American lad, apparently. Who was he? How old was he when he doodled in the book? How long did he live?
I suppose these are questions we'll never know the answer to, but I was as enchanted by the grafitti as I was the book itself. Usually an ink inscription in a book will decrease its value, but in rare instances (usually in the case of signatures or notes by a famous person), such scribblings will increase the book's value. Edward Semple Moale was not a famous person, but his doodlings add character and interest to the book, in my opinion, and the book itself is quite fascinating.
It is chock full of lovely old-style engravings, some of them full-page. This book goes into quite a bit of depth with its subject, and certainly seems far too learned for today's teen and preteen readers, yet its language is readable for modern adults without being too florid and Victorian. This book is also "readable" in the sense that you could read it normally without any fear of it going to pieces on you, like many hundred-year-old books might. It is in nice condition, with only some very slight fraying at the top and bottom of the spine. The spine and binding are sound and the pages in excellent condition overall. If this were a coin, I would grade it EF45 or so.
Many if not most of the kings and queens of England are described and illustrated, and there are maps, battle scenes, cityscapes, and too many subjects to mention. There are 470 pages including a timeline and a list of monarchs, plus an index.
I thought it was a neat find, and it didn't cost me much. If one of you fellow Anglophiles is interested in it, shoot me a PM with an offer or swap. It would be a great addition to somebody's library.
It was Warren's Stories From English History, and it had some eye-catching designs on the cover.
I opened it to see when it had been published, but before I even got to the title page, some interesting old inscriptions and grafitti in India ink on the flyleaf leapt out at me.
Apparently the owner of this book had been a young man by the name of Edward Semple Moale, and young Edward had made some fascinating schoolboy doodles on the endpaper and flyleaf. First, he signed his name, with flourishes. Then he had a go at his initials, in old Norse runes, apparently! Then there was the date, 1907, in huge numerals, and below that, a whimsical skull and crossbones and a skeleton, the first warning "Beware!" and the second beckoning, "Right This Way!", while standing next to a sign reading "To (DTH? Death?)"
I was immediately captivated by the thought of Mr. Moale signing his book, exactly a century ago. I wondered if he was an English schoolboy of the Edwardian period, and a member of the generation that produced J.R.R. Tolkien. That would explain the runic writing. Tolkien had a fascination with old runes, and it would not surprise me to see another English boy of his generation writing them.
As a member of that generation, I wondered if Mr. Moale had later followed his beckoning cartoon skeleton, "to death", in the trenches of the Great War, where most of that generation's lifeblood had been squandered? Or had he lived to a ripe old age, and traveled to America, bringing the book with him? How did the book end up on this side of the pond?
Turning the flyleaf to the title page, I saw the book had been on this side of the Atlantic all along. It was published in 1904 in Boston, Massachusetts, by the publisher D.C. Heath & Company, and the author's full name was "Henry P. Warren, L.H.D., Principal of the Albany Academy". It apparently was a book on British history from 55 BC to 1901 AD, intended for American youth. It's a little too colorful to have been a school primer or textbook, though- something tells me those would have been much more dull and dry than this.
So our young Edward was an American lad, apparently. Who was he? How old was he when he doodled in the book? How long did he live?
I suppose these are questions we'll never know the answer to, but I was as enchanted by the grafitti as I was the book itself. Usually an ink inscription in a book will decrease its value, but in rare instances (usually in the case of signatures or notes by a famous person), such scribblings will increase the book's value. Edward Semple Moale was not a famous person, but his doodlings add character and interest to the book, in my opinion, and the book itself is quite fascinating.
It is chock full of lovely old-style engravings, some of them full-page. This book goes into quite a bit of depth with its subject, and certainly seems far too learned for today's teen and preteen readers, yet its language is readable for modern adults without being too florid and Victorian. This book is also "readable" in the sense that you could read it normally without any fear of it going to pieces on you, like many hundred-year-old books might. It is in nice condition, with only some very slight fraying at the top and bottom of the spine. The spine and binding are sound and the pages in excellent condition overall. If this were a coin, I would grade it EF45 or so.
Many if not most of the kings and queens of England are described and illustrated, and there are maps, battle scenes, cityscapes, and too many subjects to mention. There are 470 pages including a timeline and a list of monarchs, plus an index.
I thought it was a neat find, and it didn't cost me much. If one of you fellow Anglophiles is interested in it, shoot me a PM with an offer or swap. It would be a great addition to somebody's library.
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Comments
G.
What k...
Oh, yeah. Her.
Hey, good sleuthing, CoC! I was gonna search eBay myself but hadn't gotten 'round to it. That's a good price on that one. It looks to be about the same condition as mine, maybe just a tiny bit lower grade. If you pulled the BIN trigger on that book, you would end up paying a tiny bit more than I did buying mine locally- I have eight bucks in mine.
But mine has the cool grafitti.
Cool, huh?