Some Of My Favorites

As promised, here are the details. The three books shown in the last post (Dryden's Poetical Works, Pope's Poetical Works, and Prose Works of Swift) are some of my favorite individual pieces. Let's start with the Dryden:

Photo: © Magdalena Altnau

In the front of this book is a wonderful inscription, shown above. Below, you can see from the title page that the book was published in 1862:

Photo: © Magdalena Altnau

The Pope edition, whose title page appears below, is from the same publisher, published one year later, in 1863:

Photo: © Magdalena Altnau

What I really like about these two editions is that they are secular works which have been edited by clergymen, which today is not as commonplace a practice as it once was.

The Swift book is a bit of an oddity; you can tell that it's old, because of the way it's printed; the typeface leaves indentations on the page, which means that each page was produced by an actual metal-plate press. However, there is no publication data on the title page, aside from who produced it. It simply says:

PROSE WRITINGS OF SWIFT.
CHOSEN AND ARRANGED BY WALTER LEWIN.

LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LTD.
24 WARWICK LANE.

However, as you can see from the picture below, Mr. Lewin signs his introductory notice as having been written in 1886.

Photo: © Magdalena Altnau

Since introductions are usually written immediately prior to publication (it's the last thing that is written, since it is intended to be a summary of the editor's thoughts and feelings about the process of bringing the book to fruition) I would venture a guess that this book was published either in 1886 or perhaps the first part of 1887.

In this picture you can also see the indentations that I was referring to. Simply wonderful; I love the subtle differences (for example, the tactile aspects mentioned here) between books such as this, from a bygone era, and modern-day books.

Lastly, as a surprise bonus, we have the title page from the aforementioned "Tonson Edition," the crown jewel of my collection:

Photo: © Magdalena Altnau

The former owner was probably proud to own this volume, since he went through the trouble of writing his name in the upper right corner. From the way it's written, I would guess that the inscription is 19th century in origin, but I could be wrong. The pencil inscription at the bottom right, "1735," is probably a notation by a bookseller who possessed the book somewhere along the way.

Well, there you have it, a look at four of my favorite pieces. In my next post, I will showcase a few of my early (pre-1910) twentieth century editions. Until then, I wish you prosperity in your own book collection endeavors!