I found a petal!

Inside a Spectator (1793) I just bought on ebay, I found, between two leaves, a dried flower petal that traveled in space and time to be with me today.

And people still wonder why I prefer to buy old books than new ones.

Have you ever found something interesting inside a book?

"Under Two Flags"- with margin notes from a reader who had served in the Legion. The most memorable being after a description of life in the barracks "Exactly as it was in our regiment."

Don't you just love the smell of old paper?

When I was taking a rare book class in college, I had to review printers' marks in an early edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary from 1755.
I was almost at the end of the book when I discovered a human hair that had been partly captured in the paper when it was made. It was
such a poignant reminder that individual people made every bit of that book.
I know just what you mean about the petal, Tararana, and about the soldier's note in your book, ziska :)

I recently got a book in which a previous owner had glued cut-out letters of his name on the rear pastedown, ransom-note style. Made me laugh.

I've found, in various books:

misc. newpaper clippings (boy, they really stain the book pages). One was about a family reunion. I tried to make contact with the family via the internet, figuring they might want the clipping and, perhaps, the book itself would be of some historical interest to the family, but no success.

a lock of hair, tied in a ribbon and placed in a cellophane packet (which also stains the book pages)

a tintype of a gentleman in a straw 'boater' hat

the occasional pressed leaf or flower

No money, yet, but I keep looking.

Os.

As far as inscriptions go, here is a website that collects scans of interesting inscriptions found in used books.

In the 1831 Aikin's Select Works of the British Poets, I found an inscription to a student from Jeremiah Day, which starts "From the President and Fellows of Yale College...". After a bit of checking, I learned that Day was the Dean of what became Yale University. The book was awarded to Andrew Stone for excelling in composition. The name "Andrew Stone" turned out to be too commonplace to learn any more without more details to go by.

Os.

I once found some kind of lost-baggage claim from Aeroflot - I sent it along to the airline, just in case it would be useful. I was in grade school at the time, and thought it really neat to have something from so far away!

I once found a $20 bill in a copy of Tender is the Night I bought in a ratty old San Francisco thrift store. I've occasionally bought an old book to find a review of that book cut out of a newspaper and inserted within the pages. My copy of They Were Expendable, about the fall of the Philippines at the beginning of WWII, has a newspaper article about the author's wedding taped to the inside front cover. Once or twice I've found an old coupon or advertising handout that a previous owner had used as a bookmark. That gives a real feeling for the time and place that the book was previously read. And I found a small pressed flower within the pages of a volume called Poems that Touch the Heart. Those are just the few examples that come easily to mind, and, yes, that is one of the very many reasons I love to buy old books, especially in thrift stores and out-of-the-way antique stores (by "out of the way" I mean in small rural towns) where the book is less likely to have been thoroughly examined for hidden value. But I love buying and reading new books, too. Almost all books have some joy to provide.

I found an airline boarding pass stub for a flight to Tibet in a paperback copy of On the Road.

I prefer old books to new ones. They often have a story to tell apart from what is printed inside them. Used bookstores are more interesting than stores for new books.

A neighbor was cleaning house and gave me a two different multi-volume sets of Macaulay's history of England from the late 19th century. Inside one was a piece of paper with a prescription written on it. It was contemporary with the books, so really neat.

Oh, and in an edition of a Shakespeare play from the 1940s, aside from copious notes all over the endpapers, several pieces of paper, such as newspaper articles, about the professor who taught the course the book was for.

Also! A creepy-ass dead, flattened spider (dark brown with cream colored marks on its back, body about half an inch long, leg span about an inch, if anyone can identify that) stuck to the first page of a women's health book. That was a scary surprise.

I love this thread!

On my shelves, inside a first edition of Watership Down, is a note in my hand, written on acid-free paper. I wrote it the night I finished reading the book to my daughter (then 8). Since it was as a bedtime book, it took several months. The book ended, there was a long pause, and then she asked "When you die, can I have that book for my own?". Of course I wasn't at all hurt by the way she phrased her request (the innocence of youth). We had enjoyed that book together so much, and for so long, that we were both feeling a sense of loss when it ended, and this prompted her to ask. I'd always hoped to pass the love of reading on to my children, and her request let me know that I'd succeeded, perhaps at a deeper level than I had thought. So, after she went to sleep, I sat down and wrote a note to her, for her to find someday when the book ends up on her shelf.

It dawns on me that we can all turn the books on our shelves into time capsules. Perhaps we should be thoughful about what we leave in our books, at least occasionally.

Os.

PS - Of course, being a collector as well as a reader, I couldn't leave anything in a book that could stain or deform the book, and I can't write in them, so my 'time capsule' options are a bit limited.

Beautiful story, Osbaldistone. I hope she finds the note in the future.

My grandmother was particularly good at finding four-leaf clovers, and I used to find them occasionally in her books. I recently found a first day of issue 750th anniversary of the Magna Carta 5 cent postage stamp in an old book. It was dated June 15, 1965.

aviddiva - my mom's whole family is unnaturally good at four-leaf clovers (you don't have family from Troy, Ohio, do you?) and I've made a habit of putting any that I find in my current book and leaving them there for posterity!

I bought a first edition of Wodehouse's Ukridge once, and inside was a thank you note from the recipient written that year. Apparently the book was a going away gift from colleagues. Also apparently, she forgot to actually give them the note :-)

I found a photograph that looks like it's from the first half of the 20th century inside a c. 1880s Thackeray novel.
My mom and I have found a peacock feather and two paper cutouts of animals/forests in an 1830s dictionary.
I bought a one-volume edition of Flaubert's works from 1904 at an antique store in Asheville and found an inscription saying it belonged to a rather influential woman from the town I lived in previously, over two hours away from Asheville. The woman's daughters had donated a ton of her old hats and very nice dresses to the local historical museum after her death, which we based a fashion show around, so that discovery was fascinating, especially since I didn't realize it until after I had bought the book and brought it home.

Oooh I found a letter from the director of an aboretum in a 1949 yearbook of trees.

I also found a bookmark for a European Mystery school in a volume of Milton's Comus. (Yes I had to look up what a mystery school was and no I did not join but it does sound like the start of a novel doesn't it.)

I discovered one book was owned by a prominent doctor after looking up a name on a bookplate.

I love it some day people will find all my leaves and random bookmarks. It makes me happy.

OK, so what's a mystery school? Or else I'll have to go look it up.

Yesterday I was in a thrift shop in Ukiah, CA, where I found a Mentor Book paperback edition of Eight Great Comedies, a collection of comic plays. It is the first Mentor printing: 1958. Inside the book I found the faded but still easily legible cash register receipt from the El Patio College Store dated 28 SEP 59. Thought that was kind of cool.

>21 rocketjk:

And how much did this book cost in 1958?

I looked for this thread in May when I received a used book via ABE for a class I took this summer. There was a leaf nicely pressed between the pages.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bukwrm1957/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCKiApoqgoMWaaQ#slid...

#22> I tried to figure that out. It's one of those frustrating deals where at one time someone had put a sticker directly over where the price was printed on the book cover (it's a Mentor paperback) and when the sticker was torn off, so was that part of the jacket showing the original price. There was nothing on the register receipt that seemed to correspond to what this paperback might have cost then. The items were all very cheap, like 0.10 (maybe a pen or an eraser in those days) or too expensive. There was a $2.20 item, which seems to me way too expensive for that book at that time. So maybe it's a false lead! Perhaps the person walked into the bookstore with the Comedies book in his/her hand and bought a few items. The buyer starts to leave when the cashier says, "Do you want your receipt?" The buyer then takes the receipt and sticks it in the Comedies book, which is the only item not inside the bookstore bag. We see a receipt in a book and assume that the book must have been part of that purchase. Sherlock Holmes would know better!

#23 - Pay extra for that?

Not a cent. I think the previous owner may have regretted loosing track of it.

#23> In California we call that "medicine."

As soon as I found it my wife started complaining about her glacoma.

I have a Latin dictionary that has written inscriptions from two brothers Joseph and Frederick Baddeley. It looks like first one brother than the other owned and used the book - a sort of hand me down. The inscriptions have various dates but the earliest is August 2nd 1853 and states that at this time 'Fred' ( as I like to think of him) was at King's College, Strand London. I was able to check their archives and low and behold found his name and that of his friends who also wrote in the book. It is full of graffiti, doodles of beaky nosed profiles (possibly of boring lecturers?) and lots of ink blots that all look rather deliberate. Fred seems to have been a pretty bad student, much more interested in looking up and underlining the rude bits of Latin that he can find! Although he started studying divinity and then law, I found out that he ended up working in a wine merchants!

I love this book.

Today as I catalogued a copy of a 1963 Penguin edition of The Moon and the Bonfire, I found that it contains a receipt dated 18 June 1965 from the Hotel Bellevue, Vienna for the sum of 1278 Austrian schilling received by "Chettle" in room 40 for an American Express travellers cheque to the value of $50. It seems that an American Mr/s Chettle took to Austria a UK edition of an English translation of an Italian novel. I hope that s/he enjoyed it.

#29: I really like that one!

#20 Mystery schools seem to be schools of esoteric knowledge that claim their source in some more ancient culture. When I looked it up I found Egyptian mystery schools and Teutonic mystery schools.

One of my friends called the number on the bookmark which directed us to a website in which the "leader" of this mystery school had written a few vague things about light and essences and used a lot of preraphaelite paintings on the site. I decided I wasn't interested in a leader with such poor writing skills.

I did want to go stake out a meeting and see who would attend a mystery school though but I would have had to talk to the leader to figure out where they met.

Once I borrowed my college's copy of Isaak Dinesen's "Out of Africa." What was really interesting was that somebody had penciled notes in the margins in RUSSIAN! I can decipher Russian letters, but I don't know the language, so in the end, I had to ask my boyfriend, who understands Russian (the Commies made him learn Russian when he was a boy in Poland), what the notes meant. I think the reader was translating various vocabulary words he/she found in the story into Russian for clarification.

Interesting Hilaria, I have a friend who was in school in Hungary during the 50s who was also forced to learn Russian. She and her classmates resented it greatly though it did prove useful to her in later years. She resented it so much (along with a number of other things) she participated in the uprising of '56 and ended up fleeing to the States.

My husand recently gave me a book about Admiral Dewey from 1899 and there was a gorgeous lithograph of Calla Lillies in it along with neswpaper clippings about Florence Harding, the DAR working on restoring Colonial Williamsburg and a lithograph of an Indian maiden in a canoe. They are still in the book where they will stay-why take them from where they've been all these many years?

#35> "They are still in the book where they will stay-why take them from where they've been all these many years?"

That's how I would feel, too.

My, I have enjoyed this thread, the Baddesley Latin book and the ticket to Tibet in particular. I have found a monogrammed handkerchief (it appeared quite clean, if yellow with age), dozens of four leaf clovers, pressed flowers, receipts, newspaper articles (I'm with you, Osbaldistone, about their destructive powers), those cards one gets at a funeral, an actual bookmark, etc., etc. I always get such a lift when I find something like this tucked in the pages, part of the joy of old books.

I found a bookmark in an old book once that read, "This is where I fell asleep."

I'm currently reading The Incredible Mets, the story of the NY Mets baseball team right up to and including their 1969 championship. The book was published right after that World Series and my copy is a first edition paperback. It's been on my shelf for quite some time. Anyway, about a third of the way through the book I found one of those subscription offer post cards that come with most magazines. This one is from Sports Illustrated, and includes an offer of 27 weeks of the magazine for $3.27. Maybe I'll send it in and see what happens!

In a book from 1731 I found several holes from bookworms. The nicest one went all through the book with a larger lair (?) between pp 90-120. Seems like a cosy home...

I just got a drink recipe book from 1945 and inside it was an ad for a winery in Southern California that says it's California's oldest, with prices ($1.50 for sparkling champagne, etc.) I googled the name and found that it's gone, but the building has been preserved. There were also some drink recipes cut out of newspapers. The inscription in the front says "Here's How - Pop" so it was a very satisfying estate sale purchase. And, the Aunt Agatha Cocktail was delicious.

I just found, in a book about Italy, several insertions including a magazine clipping about the Florence flood of 1966 when it was news. Since I have been to Florence and heard a vivid account of the flood from a woman who was a small child when the flood inundated the first floor of her family home (up to the 3-metre ceilings), I found it especially interesting.

It seems I haven't mentioned the card I found in a prayer book, signed by Father Solanus Casey. He was a Franciscan priest who spent most of his life in Detroit. People would come to see him in all their troubles, very much like Brother Andre in Montreal. And whoever came, Father Solanus would sign them up for some confraternity of prayer. (That was so when people were miraculously healed Father Solanus could say, it wasn't me, it was the confraternity.) This was the membership card. Solanus Casey is up for canonization, so that's actually a relic, which is pretty cool. I gave it to someone who would treasure it.

This is an interesting topic. After reading through these, I immediately thought of my copy of The Medical Recorder, Volume VIII: A Case of Wounded Stomach by William Beaumont from 1825. Included inside my copy was a note from one scholar to another:

To Myron, This belongs with your Beaumont. Note how the editor on p. 840 passes lightly over the blunder his staff made in ascribing this epoch making study's first appearance to another author! See p. 14 - Elmer Belt

After reading the note again, the names seemed very familiar. The bookplate inside said Myron Prinzmetal, which was the author of a book I had recently picked up. He was known to be an avid medical book collector. The other, Elmer Belt, was one I new well from Human Sexuality class, a pioneer in sex change surgery and I also have one of his books. He also had a vast collection of books, many of which were da Vinci's. What a strange coincidence.

#43> Extremely cool find! I love reading about this sort of stuff!

>22 Osbaldistone: My guess: 50 cents.

#45> I think that's probably right. I had a look at the cover again, and where the sticker was afixed and then pulled away, obscuring the price on the cover itself, there seems to be a "5", so that would lead me to believe that it was the beginning of 50c (That's odd, it seems there is no cent symbol on my computer keyboard. Or, given the infrequency with which we use that symbol nowadays, I guess it's not so odd.)

#43 - that's great!

¢

On a US keyboard hold down option and then numeral 4 (shift gives you the $ on this key)

hold down the alt key and type 0162 on the number pad
¢

#48 & 49>

Hey, thanks for adding your two cents!

very cute ;)

When I started college, I elected to take Hellenic Greek as my foreign language, and my mother gave me her old Greek New Testament to use, to save me the cost of a new one, since she had also taken Greek at that very school. When I leafed through it for the first time, I found a flower, a four-leaf clover, and a piece of notebook paper on which Mom had been doodling her name and my Dad's name -- they dated in college.

Sweet.

My freshman year of college I found a marijuana branch in the answer section of my used Calculus book. My friends and I flushed it down the toilet out of fear that someone would tell on us. The best part was I bought the book from the school.

Only users lose drugs.

I couldn't resist buying this when I saw it in a thrift store here in Florida.

I found pressed flowers in a book!

Wild Flowers of the Old Bay State by Harvey B. Greene.

This past week I began reading The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Volume One 1829-1852, which I had recently purchased online via Abe Books. Stuck in the book, about two thirds back, I found this drawing.



The book was published/printed in 1909 and given as a gift soon thereafter (according to the inscriptions on the inside front cover) but many of pages were still untrimmed, so nobody has read the book all the way through. But somebody, obviously, was carrying it around.

The drawing is signed "Gladys H. Scot" I think. I'm sure about the Gladys and the H, but unsure of the last name.

Jerry! How amazing! I wonder if Gladys is the artiste or the subject.

Cool, and thanks for sharing this!

Richard, I'm glad you enjoyed seeing this. I'm pretty sure Gladys is the artist, if only because to the right of the bonnet in very small letters are the initials GHS.

One more thing: after scanning the drawing, when I picked up the paper to return in to the book (where else should it live?), I noticed for the first time a tiny pin hole at the center near the very top. This means someone had it pinned or thumbtacked to a wall or bulletin board at one time. Just one more small piece to the mystery.

Don't you *love* mysteries like this?! Who was the subject? Why did Gladys draw it? Was the drawing a gift? To whom, for what, how was it delivered and received, why was it pinned up at some point, why would anyone selling the book want to give it away...?

...?!...

Yes, I do very much love such book mysteries. To me, they're part of what makes buying and reading used books so wonderful.

My guess is that the drawing was put in the book by the original owner at some point. Quite possibly that person passed away and his/her books got sold in an estate sale and, through one or more stops, ended up in the California bookstore from which I ordered it via Abe Books. I bet that drawing has been sitting in that book undetected for 80 years. I personally carried the book around for a few days before coming upon the drawing, which was stuck about 2/3 of the way back. I only found it when I began cutting the untrimmed pages so I could read the volume. So the fact that it was so firmly ensconced tells me it might well have been there for a while. And the fact that there were so many untrimmed pages (about a quarter of the pages, spread throughout the book, needed to be cut) tells me the book has not had very many owners. Certainly, nobody has read the book all the way through; perhaps somebody skimmed sections of it.

I cannot resist books with untrimmed pages, especially when they're about a century old. I have to buy them, cut the pages and read them.

I found a dried out bit of lavender inside Gone With The Wind, a newspaper clipping from the 70's about an Egyptian Mummy inside a collection of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry and a childs picture drawn on a paper bag inside The Water Babies.

I also love buying old, old books with messages written in them. Usually happy birthday/Christmas etc but it always feels like a special connection. I have moved it on now and look out for more unique messages. The best was a book of poetry with "Dear Lizzie, I hope you find the happiness you deserve with your new fiancee. I am sorry for everything." It feels like being in on a secret, and having a bond with the person who loved ( I hope) the book before I did.

That last one to Lizzie was wonderful. Although I do like the drawing in The Water Babies too.

To think that I have a friend who thinks that buying pre-owned books is disgusting. Her loss.

I picked up a book today which contained two boarding passes, a copy of someone's military discharge record in a sealed, addressed envelope, and a recipe for taco soup!

Are you going to mail the envelope or make the soup?

#66> How old are the boarding passes, and where are they to and from?

Details, we need details!

>66 aviddiva:: are you going to try to return the military discharge? My goodness, what a find, all put together!

Details, as requested!

I did a little research, and it looks as though the dischargee likely still lives at the same address, so I'm planning to send them back to him. I may include the soup recipe. ;) The boarding passes were for two women travelling from Portland to Oakland in 2007, but neither had the same last name as the military man, and I didn't try to find them.

The book was a hardbound copy of The Overlook by Michael Connelly.

As for the soup recipe, here it is. If anyone makes it, let me know how it comes out! I probably won't, because I don't usually cook using so many processed foods, but if anyone can tell me what shoopeg corn is, I'd love to know.

Taco Soup

1 cup=2 points

1 lb ground turkey
1 onion chopped
1 package Hidden Valley Ranch dressing
1 package taco seasoning
Brown together and drain if needer (sic)

Add to mixture (add liquid and all):
1 can S&W San Antonio beans
1 can Pinto beans
1 can Cajun style tomatoes
1 can Shoopeg corn

Heat for 1 hour

Enjoy!!!

Here's what wikipedia says about shoepeg corn. I think their recipe misspelled it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoepeg_corn

I found a leaf today in Schoolgirls' Holiday Book a lovely 1920s-1930s British book for schoolgirls with lots of stories about plucky girls and helpful guides to birds and weather and plant identification. I hope it was put there by a plucky British schoolgirl!

Thank you for the recipe aviddiva!

My copy of The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey had been sitting on my history/memoir shelf for over a year waiting to be read. When I took it down for that purpose this month, I found within a boarding pass for a flight on American Airlines from Dallas to Birmingham, Alabama on Halloween afternoon, 2001. I don't feel comfortable posting the fellow's name here, but suffice it to say that it is an Arab name. It makes me wonder what the experience must have been for this person flying from Texas to Alabama just six weeks after 9/11.

As some of you may know, about a month an a half ago I took over a used bookstore in Ukiah, CA.

I do a lot of taking in books from customers for store credit. I have developed a rule that if I find anything stuck within a book I take in, or a book already on the shelf I have reason to examine, I will leave it where I find it for whomever buys that book to find. That's assuming it's not something too thick to remain within without damaging the book somehow.

Found a US$5 bill in an old paperback I finally decided to pull off the shelf and read. Bought it used awhile back.

Unlike rocketjk, I removed the bill and stored it safely in my wallet. :-)

Os.

I'm currently reading the third volume of the Memoirs of Carl Schurz, a 19th-century American statesman who was quite prominent in his time. I'm about 4/5's of the way through the book, which is an old one, printed in 1910. Last night out falls a business card-size (a bit larger, actually) light cardboard document that turns out to be the Safe Drive Reward issued to Dorothy Reid in 1938 or 1939.

The front side of the card says,
"Copyright, 1938, Insurco"

Within a round logo is the copy,
"Safe Driver
Gold Chevron Insurance"

And at the bottom
"Safe Driver Reward"

The back side of the card reads

This is to Certify that
Dorothy Reid (typed in)
has been granted the Safe Driver Reward, in recognition of careful driving and consideration for the lives and property of others. For this distinguished service to the cause of saftey and obedience to the law, the recipient has earned the gratitude of the public, the police and civic authorities, and the Insurance Companies which offer this Gold Chevron award.

This safe Driver Reward was granted under a policy of Automobile Liability Insurance in effect during twelve months of 1938-1939 and issued by the London & Lancashire Indemnity Company of America, a member of the National Bureau of Casualty & Surety Underwriters. The Administration Office of said Company is at Hartford, Conn., with Departmental Offices at New York and San Francisco and Branch Offices or Agents in principal cities.

I once found a hand-colored map showing the nautical path of a German minesweeper in the Baltic Sea from the First World War. Fittingly, it was tucked inside another military book on the Battle of Britain.

#78> Wow! That is very cool.

I bought an atlas of Delaware County, PA from 1885 or there about. When I opened it, I found a map of the 23(?)rd ward of Philadelphia County (Manayunk and going north) from about the same time. This was before all the different areas of the county became the city of Philadelphia. It was in such good condition that I had it framed and it is on the wall in my library - yes I love maps!

I have had a somewhat battered hardcover copy of T.E. Lawrence's classic memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, sitting on my shelf for a long time. I don't remember when or where I bought it. It is an early commercial edition, though not a first, as the reverse of the title page says "Privately Printed, 1926. First Published for General Circulation, 1935," but on the title page itself, under the publisher appear the Roman numerals for 1937. At any rate, this week I took the book down to finally read it and found stuck in the pages towards the back a rectangular printed notice on light card stock bearing the following message:

IMPORTANT

For your safety an important new feature has been incorporated in this machine. The light switch provides electric current for the motor as well as the light. In order to operate the machine this switch must be on.

If you are interrupted while sewing and must leave the machine unattended, just turn off the light switch and the machine can not be started accidently by pressing on the foot or knee control This feature also applies when the machine is in storage.

The foot or knee control is used to vary the machine speed from zero to high.

I'm guessing the book's previous owner used this card as a bookmark. At any rate, that's what I'm doing.

This thread has gone dormant, but anyhow I thought I'd add in this recent find. Stuck inside the copy of Isaac Singer's In My Father's Court that had been sitting on my shelf for who knows how long, I found this deposit slip for $115.52 at the Commonwealth National Band of San Francisco on July 31, 1967.

Just for fun, I looked up how much this was in 2020 money, figuring for inflation: $894

So far the best thing I've found in a used book is a print-out of a close-up aerial photo of a cluster of buildings in a forested area, some of the buildings outlined and labelled with number codes, and on the back of it a grid of five-digit blocks of letters.

(It makes it better if you know that I live near a major military intelligence base.)

Hey there! I literally found a petal, or actually several, in my copy of Now We Are Enemies: The Story of Bunker Hill by Thomas J. Fleming. The book was originally published in 1960, and my copy seems to be from that year. My LT entry date for the book is in 2008, which is when I was first entering my library here, so there's no telling how long I've owned my copy, which I certainly bought used. Anyway, I finally pulled the book off my shelf to read after all these years, and somewhere around page 75 (the page describing the Boston Tea Party) behold . . .

The Tinder-Box arrived in the mail last week. Inside, an aged scrap of paper with two words dashed off in heavy pencil: We have. The ‘we’ is double underlined, and the ‘have’ is triple underlined.
Now, I have.

>85 2wonderY: That would make a great, enigmatic, t-shirt!

>85 2wonderY: >86 rocketjk: I agree on the t-shirt. My personal version of this is "You are not a true book collector if you haven't bought the same book twice several times." Luckily the dealers I work with have been more than helpful to correct my brain dead episodes. The main reason for LT I say in my opinionated opinion!!