What did your grandma (or grandpa) read?

I don't know if this is interesting to anyone else or not, but I stumbled across a page in my grandmothers scrapbook from her high school years (she graduated in 1924) and it lists her favorite authors and books. I thought I would list them here. I would enjoy seeing anyone else's grandparent's lists, too.

My grandmother on my mother's side, started this list is 1923.
Silas Marner by George Eliot
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde - grandma spelled it "Wildemar's"
Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The History of Henry Esmond - grandma has "Henrey Esmond by George Eliot"
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini - she went to a movie of this on her 19th birthday, 1924.
New Arabian Nights by R. L. Stevenson
Captain Blood: His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock
Salomé by Oscar Wilde
The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Fortune's Fool by Rafael Sabatini
Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Green Mirror by Hugh Walpole
Othello by William Shakespeare
The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
The Mine with the Iron Door by Harold Bell Wright
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Americanization of Edward Bok by Edward Bok
Richard Carvel by Winston Churchill - hope the touchstone is right on this one, it isn't the British Prime Minister, but the American Winston Churchill.

That list is the beginning of a long love affair for my maternal grandmother with books and reading. She is one of the reasons I love reading so. She worked in the library and gave me lovely books at every opportunity. Her specialty in the last library she worked in was gathering together all the California and local history books they had on their shelves, or were donated to them, into a special room. Also local historical photographs. Sadly that has been dismantled now and most of the books sold/discarded from the library. Oh well.

The only book I remember my grandmother on my father's side reading was the Bible, but after my grandfather died (she had died when I was about 7, he died when I was about 16), I found a tattered, well read movie edition (Sir Lawrence Olivier) paperback of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, my first exposure to one of my most favoritest books ever. :)

As for my grandfathers, my paternal grandfather read no books to my knowledge, but he may have. I don't remember many books in their home. There was a huge Webster's dictionary published in the 1800s, the Bible, that hidden paperback, some children's books for us, and that's all I remember. He did read the newspapers, the Farm Almanac, magazines, etc. He worked very hard outside most of the day on the farm.

My maternal grandfather I did not know well, he died when I was about 7, but I am getting to know him better (at least his younger self) through his letters to my grandmother. He has recommended several books to her to read, from the light-hearted romance to serious philosophical stuff. They also read some H. G. Wells fictions.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Now what's yours?

>1 MrsLee: I commend her taste! I have read 6 of the above, and know several more of the Sabatini from their film forms.

I never knew my paternal grandparents, and I don't remember my maternal grandparents owning any fiction. My grandmother was, however, an extremely heavy user of the local library.

>2 -pilgrim-: Well, I will soon know whether or not I care for Sabatini. I hopped over to Amazon and purchased Captain Blood and Scaramouche, then, Amazon was so kind as to tell me that an audio version of Scaramouche was available narrated by Simon Vance, one of my favorite narrators, so of course I snapped that up too!

My father's mother kept long lists of things she'd read and things she wanted to read. Sometimes she'd pass along books to me if she wasn't keeping them, and she and my aunt would trade books back and forth. She read a lot of mysteries, and some other stuff. Also magazines. I don't know that she had a lot of time to read while she was raising six kids, but after they moved out she read quite a lot (in addition to doing the daily crossword in the paper).

>4 reconditereader: I inherited my grandmother's books, many of which I had already read, but LT wasn't a thing then and I didn't think to catalog which books she had. Ah well. I didn't keep all of them, because I couldn't, but I still have many.

My grandmother was from Italy and I did not live close to her. That would have been interesting to ask my mother. I have my mother's books and some books my aunts had. Now you have me thinking that I will add this information into my genealogy notes.

>1 MrsLee: How wonderful to have a record like that! I only have vague memories.

My father's mother(*) died quite young, I don't know much about her tastes apart from a few books I inherited which she got as Sunday school prizes, and they are predictably uncontroversial choices: Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Charles Kingsley. (My grandmother was very close to her aunt, only slightly older, who was a schoolteacher and the most bookish person in the family: I remember her as a big fan of Scott, Dickens, John Buchan, Captain Marryatt, and Fenimore Cooper, which might have been due to spending a lifetime around small boys, but she was also, less predictably, a huge Walt Whitman fan. Something that of course meant nothing to me until long after her death.)

My father's father was mostly reading non-fiction when I knew him, industrial history and a lot of nautical books (he just missed the chance to go to sea in his teens and always regretted it). He seems to have been keen on P G Wodehouse and J B Priestley earlier in life. He had long rows of Winston Churchill's history books on his shelves, I don't know if he ever read them.

My mother's mother wasn't much of a reader, she was the sort who couldn't bear other people to see her "idle", so she was always mending or preparing food when we were about, but she did read other people's discarded newspapers on the quiet. And she seemed to enjoy reading to us when we were small (Heidi and Max und Moritz).

My mother's father also died before I knew him: I'm told he read a lot, but it was probably mostly library books. The few books my grandmother still had by the time I was around were mostly standard late 19th century German classics: Hauptmann, Keller, Storm, Fontane, and so on. Plus a residue of Ina Seidel and the like that my mother and her sister probably read when they were young and disclaimed later.

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(*) "Paternal grandmother" is such a clumsy expression: why can't English have an equivalent to the convenient Swedish farmor, mormor, etc.?

Both my grandfathers were deceased before I was born.

I don't recall any bookshelves in my Nana's house. I'm sure I would have browsed them, if present. Her house centered around the kitchen and dining room, which had it's own fascinations.

My other grandmother lived in her daughter's household. She and her daughter, my aunt, were sewers. Their fascinations were fabrics and yarn. I inherited a box of tiny quilting squares - fabrics which were scrapped from remnants after making dresses for us when we were very little.

My husband's grandparents had lovely old books in built-in shelves in the living room. I never saw them pulled out and enjoyed though. After I inherited (because no one else wanted them), I saw they were inscribed by more distant family members, gone before I met my husband. I've cataloged some of them here with the tag Engle-Pease collection.

A few textbooks, some local history, and lots of old novels.

That scrapbook page is treasure! I don't remember seeing my maternal grandparents reading much, but I do remember looking at old bound turn-of-the-century editions of Harpers Weekly that were in the spare room...along with some of the earliest editions of the Addams Family cartoon anthologies from the 40's or very early 50's. (Which were just NOT in character for either grandparent ... shame on me for not asking who read them!)

One of my grandmothers was not a reader that I recall.

The other one had a copy of Watership Down on her coffee table when it was first published, she might have read it. I recall her bedroom bookshelves had many, many Reader's Digest volumes.

I have one book of hers that I found on her shelves, loved, and she gave to me: Cinderella Hassenpfeffer and Other Tales Mein Grossfader Told.

I've read three on her list.