Do you own books where the previous owner wrote an inscription? I have quite a few. For instance, I have a paperback of "Intruder In The Dust" signed by Faulkner himself. And a few of mine also have the previous owners' names in them and warnings to others to keep off, e.g., one of mine is typed "LIKE HELL IT'S YOURS! PUT IT BACK! THIS MEANS YOU!" (Caps and all!) Anyone else have books like those? tjoe};>

I have purchased several used books that had the owners name or name and address in them. I have bought a few that have inscriptions such as Merry Christmas (whatever year) or Happy Birthday (whatever year) from the person who gave the book to the previous owner.

I've never gotten ahold of any that had any sort of "keep off" warnings on them. I had to laugh when I read the "like H*** it's yours" message you wrote about.

Well, I DO have my Great Grandfather's bible, inscribed in beautiful copperplate as follows
Presented to the above as a token of affectionate regard by his first class boys of the Wesleyan Day School, Deptford, 1869.

Wow, what a great thing to have, Ren ... I bet you treasure it.

I have a signed book by Terry Pratchett which is really cool and another that is signed by the author who I went to school with but otherwise just the normal name/address kind of thing.

I have a book called Short and Shivery signed by the author Robert D. San Souci. It's a collection of scary stories.
"Best wishes to Christy---
another true fan of the scary story! I hope you enjoy these!
-Robert D. San Souci 10/29/97
Happy Shivers!"
He came to our school and all we had to do was send our books to the library so he could sign them. I didn't actually meet him although he did do some sort of presentation where one of my best friends,Nicole,introduced him. It was funny because he was like,"Thank you,Danielle" Don't ask.

You'd be amazed at the number of books I have picked up at garage sales and second hand book shops that are autographed by the author!

I have a friend called Murray who insists that every book in his collection is inscribed by the giver. If you give Murray a book as a gift, there's no way he'll let you get away without inscribing it. But what is really funny is that when Murray buys a book for himself, he dates it and inscribes it "To Murray, from Murray". I know you must be thinking I made this up, but I swear it's true!

I have a "Victory Cook Book" from the Second World War. My mother-in-law received it as a wedding gift and she has handed it down to me with a suitable inscription.

One of the things I love about it is the very old bookplate stuck on the inside cover which says:
"Please return this to my shelf,
I like it very much myself".

In Reply to MotherGoose ( my mum) I want to tell everyone who doesn't believe her about Murray that it is TRUE. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Also my mom has a book. I won't tell you the title because it's rude but we have a celebrity friend who wrote this book and autographed it. The thing is he autographed it to someone we don't know. We got the book at a garage sale. Mom was going to ask him to sign it but then she noticed the autogragh and thought it might be a bad idea in case the book was autographed for a friend.

I have a "Victory Cook Book" from WWII also! Mine says it's "the MacArthur Edition", whatever that means. It was my grandmother's, and I just love the fact that it has a recipe for marshmallows in it. (And no, I haven't ever actually made any.)

I've never seen a recipe for marshmallows. Interesting!

"This book is the personal property of Bill Randell and if found or borrowed should be returned"

I still have this book

The inscriptions in my books, like Babymoo's, tend to be "Happy Christmas" or "To X from Y".

The only thing a bit out of the ordinary is the inscription in an old copy of Gustave Lanson's history of French literature:

"Aimons l'éternelle beauté qui ne vieillit point, et qui empêche de vieillir tous ceux qui l'aiment au-dessus de tout - Souvenir affectueux de votre collègue Louise De Kiaz - Château de Vidy - Noël 1899" ("Let us love that everlasting beauty which never grows old, and which preserves from old age all those who love it above all things - an affectionate souvenir from your colleague Louise De Kiaz - Château de Vidy - Christmas 1899.")."

I don't know whether the words are the lady's own or a quotation; I certainly can't find them in any dictionary of quotations. The Château de Vidy near Lausanne is now the HQ of the International Olympic Committee: I don't know what it was in 1899.

I saw this in an old book and inscribe it in all of mine: "If this book should ever roam, box its ears and send it home."

I am a huge fan of old books and treasure the inscriptions in them. Its like holding a little piece of someone's history in your hands. The problem is that I find it impossible to let go of a book once its mine. So its highly unlikely that any of mine will find their way into a used book store for the cycle to repeat.

Since inscriptions were mentioned in another thread (How Books Should be Treated), I thought I'd bring this thread up for an airing. I thought it would be of interest to newer members who had not seen it before.

I was browsing for the old books thread, because I hit the jackpot yesterday with some beautiful old books, and came across this one, which I must have missed when it was brought back up the first time...

I have a copy of Lake Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor that is inscribed "To Barry, your life or mine?" and then autographed. I have a bunch of old books that have been inscribed by someone for a birthday or Christmas, too, and of those, the dates are what I like best. I also have a now-in-pieces book of Alfred Tennyson that was beautifully inscribed with a note about Tennyson's death and burial, as well as the meaning behind the last poem he wrote.

And I like to add inscriptions sometimes. All in all, I think inscriptions are lovely, though I understand they can detract from the "value" of the book, but frankly, the $$ value of a book isn't the most part of it's real value to me. Books are a way that I share with my family, and I'd rather write an inscription in a rare book if it means it will be more special to my sister than keep it pristine so as not to effect it's resale amount. In fact, I also REALLY love giving books that have already been inscribed, but adding my own inscription. Just this winter I bought my sis a copy of a book by Ogden Nash called "Parents Keep Out", which I believe was a 1st Edition, that was inscribed very simply with "To Carrie, Dec 25, 1951", so I added my own underneath the first... "To Sis, Dec 25, 2005"

Not many of the novels etc. we have are inscribed, but quite a few of the sea scout manuals are. When we originally baught them, my father wrote his name inside of the cover and started lending them to various members of the crew. Within three months, all of them wound up reading "Stolen from" and then my dad's name.

Much depends on how the inscription is written. A few of the books that I have bought secondhand have inscriptions of the kind "To Janice with love from Mum and Dad, Xmas 1970" scrawled in purple ballpoint pen - which doesn't look at all pleasing.

I have a very, very small number of books that have been autographed by the author (or in one case, the translator). In one or two cases they take the form of a handwritten dedication. For some reason I have tended not to pay that much attention to such things.

On the other hand, I'll never forget the reaction of a second cousin of mine when I asked her if she'd sign a portrait photo she'd taken of me. (She is very highly regarded as a photographer and had just had a solo exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in Central London). She squirmed visibly as she said, "The trouble is that if I do that, the portrait will become something other than simply a photo of you". Then as a compromise she said she'd do what she sometimes does for close friends, namely put two or three engimatic but distinctive letters on the back of one (or two) of the prints by or over her little rubber-stamp - and she was of course as good as her word.

Ooh, I like this one... In one of the books I bought yesterday (12 books for $10, the oldest from 1858, the newest from 1935, but 6 of them from 1905-1907) is inscribed in such a way as to cover most of the title page.

"The Carnegie Public Library Essay Award presented to Tom Crow by the Library Board of the Carnegie Public Library, Coffeyville, Kansas, December 1935." And then it appears that young Tom Crow also signed it, "Tom Crow, 8B, Age 12, 1935" It's written with a fountain pen with a flat tip, so it's a little bit fancy, but not really elaborate, and even Young Tom's penmanship is worthy of praise. The book? Valiant: Dog of the Timberline, by Jack O'Brien. And from the look of it, it's possible it's a 1st edition.

I know someone who was given a quiz book for their 21st birthday which had his own writing in it from when he had borrowed it a couple of years previous! (talk about being a miser!)

I once went to a lunch where the guest speaker was Christine Hamilton, she was talking about her book about British batle-axes - she was very amusing.

Anyway, my daughter is VERY anti-Conservative so as a joke I asked Christine to inscribe her book "To dear Victoria, I am SO sorry to have missed meeting you".

I have several books that my grandfather received for fullmark prizes of the Cuckney Church Sunday School in Nottinghamshire, signed by Winifred Portland in the early 1890's.

I also bought two boxes of books from the John S Collins estate in Troy, MO in the sixties for less than 50 cents a box (auction). He had his name plate in them and some have other inscriptions or notes in the margins.

I like margin notes as you can see the interpretations they were taking from the text. Though I try not to make notes in books myself.

What other margin notes have people found?

"A.B. Paterson 18/ April 1907"

Cost me a fortune to get it but it's my favourite thing in the whole world.

Recently, I was contacted by a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald. She was doing an article on book inscriptions and had obviously read our thread, as she asked for permission to use my story about my friend Murray (mentioned above). I was happy to give it.

I thought our regular bookworms might enjoy seeing the final product. In the end, she didn't use my anecdote, but I found the resultant story very interesting. Unfortunately, I don't know the date it went to print so I can't reference it accordingly.



Wearing hearts on their flyleaves

PIP CUMMINGS
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD


Inscriptions may add to a book's value ... and its poignancy.

Being raised by librarians can leave a person with some peculiar hang-ups about books.

The volumes in our home - all 6000 of them - were shelved according to the Dewey decimal system. Even a collection of 1960s Playboy magazines had their place in upright file boxes, marked with publication dates, thus conferring a respectability on them that makes any dissembling about "the quality of the articles" seem faint-hearted.

We read our books with clean hands, put dust jackets aside and would sooner lose a place than turn down a page. Notes scrawled in margins still wound me.

The exception to our respectful treatment of books was inscription. To me, a book without words on the flyleaf is as diminished as a present without a card. Book dealers don't unequivocally agree, however. "In the trade that's known as an 'Aunty Jack'," says Louella Kerr, president of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Book Dealers.

"[My mother] had the biggest handwriting - huge - and she used to fill up the whole of the endpaper," Kerr says. "I've got some books that I'm very fond of, inscribed by my mother, but as far as I'm concerned they're quite defaced."

But if the vandal is the author it's another matter. Most prized among dealers and collectors is the dedication copy, featuring a handwritten note to the person to whom the book has also been dedicated in print. Also valued are association copies (signed to a person with whom there is an interesting association). A flat signing (just the author's signature) is preferred to a presentation copy (to Joe Bloggs, from the author).

Ebay lists more than 100 inscribed books for sale, trading for as much as $12,500 (a first edition of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, flirtily inscribed "For Toodles, For Kuriosity none were her ekual ...") and as little as 99 cents.

Author lunches and literary festivals are flooding the signed-book market. Rejecting the vogue for flat signings, the American book dealer Ken Lopez is enthusiastically acquiring presentation copies, reasoning that they contain even more of the author's original writing. "When you buy a signed book you are purchasing a signature," he writes, "but when you buy an inscribed book you are getting a story."

Sometimes those stories require diplomatic handling. Kerr says she often keeps a book off the market because it might offend someone. Yet, however much it may increase a book's value, there's something sad about inscribed books coming up for sale.

The cynical folk behind the Deuce of Clubs website, aware that "some gift books appear not [to] have been quite as treasured as the givers may have hoped", have compiled a page titled Dedicated to the One I Love (www.deuceofclubs.com/books/dedicated). Inscriptions found in thrift-store books are accompanied by humorous theories as to why the volume has been abandoned. Some need little explanation. Oversized, curvy script graces the front page of a Christmas gift from 1967: "Sweet Mom, I love you so much and I hope you enjoy this book. Yours forever, Jenafer." It's the Mormon position paper on The Church and the Negro.

Kerr recalls a large group of books turning up at auction in Melbourne a decade ago, inscribed by poet Ted Hughes to his brother. "I bought as many as I could," she says, "but I certainly felt that that was rather a hurtful thing."
Some people, she adds, attempt to circumvent hurt feelings by cutting out their name, "so then you've got an incomplete book as well as a defaced book".

Even a cherished book will evoke pathos when circumstances change. My copy of The Diving Bell & The Butterfly is inscribed by my then partner: "May all the love between us carry us two through the year ahead." Six months later I left him. Nine years later the hopeful inscription still makes me feel guilty.

Anne Sexton inscribed her Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of poetry Live or Die to Erica Jong "Yes! Yes! We'll live!", just four months before Sexton took her own life.

One of the most romantic love letters I received was a full-page inscription. "To Pip, my lover," it begins. "Did you know that you make me as happy as I have ever been?" As happy? Consolingly, the rest of it is so unreserved I've never lent the book to anyone.

The lover and I remain friends, and there are many more books that bear inscriptions from him given in subsequent years, some of them referring to earlier gifts. "Thought I'd better make up for my last pressie with a real book this time!" reads the flyleaf of a philosophical text, apologising for the misjudged gift of an airport thriller, and establishing a relationship between the two books that the Dewey decimal system could never hope to accommodate.

Reminds me of some of the books I've picked up second hand. Lots of inscriptions but my favourite is a copy of World Safari signed "Go for it" by 80s model Judy Green.