The oldest book you own?

I have a few Mabel Lucy Atwell books from my childhood in the fifties and the Alison Uttley Little Grey Rabbit books. I couldn’t part with them they were my beginnings of a lifelong love of books.

Allira

I have a book of Bible Stories presented to me as First Prize at the end of the first year at Junior School when I was eight.

Show off 😇😁

My oldest book dates from 1954 and was given to me, suitably inscribed, by my parents on my birthday. It is ‘The Hong Kong Countryside’ published by the South China Press. We lived in Hong Kong for a year when I was a child. I have very fond memories of the countryside and treasure it for that and the parental inscription.

I always pass books on , so my oldest book is the fairly large version of the bible given to me when I started grammar school in 1964 aged 11. I also have the small bible given to me when I started nurse training in 1989.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. No date on it. Very old, handed down in family. In a box and very rarely touched now.

I have a book of Bible Stories presented to me as First Prize at the end of the first year at Junior School when I was eight.

The Wind in the Willows which my grandparents gave me about 80 years ago, when I was 6. I used to read it to my sons when we lived in Norfolk and somehow the Mole acquired a Norfolk accent.

I have a few of a relative’s books which were probably 1930’s onwards
Angel Pavement
The Cruel Sea
A set of Dickens in red leather
An early Lewis Carrol anthology
Cold Comfort Farm
I Capture The Castle
Don’t Stop The Carnival
How Green Was My Valley
Wide Sargasso Sea

The only one I have now of all the books I owned prior to leaving home at seventeen and a half, is a book of Walter
Scott’s poems that I picked up at a jumble sale as a child, attracted more by the bindings, the illustrations and the gilding on the edges of the pages than the poems probably. It looks satisfyingly old. There’s an inscription inside indicating that it was given to someone called Madge in 1907. 118 years ago. Frustratingly, there is no publication date in it, but it was illustrated by A.S Forrest, a Scottish artist born in 1869. I’m not and never have been a fan of Scott’s poems but he sits alongside my many other poetry books like the doyen of poets old and new.

I love old books and I have a small collection of Victorian books with beautifully bound covers and gold leaf printing.

I think my oldest book is 'The Newgate Calendar' a rather shabby edition. I don't think I have anything of any great value.

One of my most treasured books is a 1930s copy of "The Inimitable Jeeves" which belonged to my father and he wrote his name in it.

I still have my mother in laws hardback Mrs Beetons Cookbook, full of very different recipes from years ago.
3 red hardback famous five stories by enid blyton, each book had a triology of 3 of the stories she wrote.
Remember buying them with christmas money in 1966 .
I wrote when bought on inside cover.
Only one Secret Seven which also has different stories.
Never really keen on secret seven.
Kept them all in case i had grandchildren which i have, thinking they would like to read.
But not the type of books they read these days.

Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.

I'm now 60 and bought it from WH Smith in 1980, aged 15. Paid £4.50 for it.

It's a bit battered as I've read it several times over the years, but I've still got it!

I have some of my grandfather's books from 1910. An H G. Wells one and others. He died before I was born and my dad was little so they're all that's left. I won't throw them out although I expect my daughter will 😂

My grandmother’s prayer book inscribed Easter 1925, a gift from her aunt.

Equally precious to me is the copy of Jane Eyre which the same Grandma gave me on my twelfth birthday, sixty years ago.

I still have the first book which was bought for me of Nursery Rhymes. It is torn and scribbled on but I can’t part with it.

Pleasebenice, I, too, have Sunday school book prizes from the fifties. Obviously, they were prizes for attendance. Prizes for achievements have not featured in my life!

I still have my Sunday school birthday books. Little bible story picture books.Can’t bring myself to part with them even though I no longer have a faith.

A copy of 'Elegant Extracts' dating to the mid 19th century. Jane Austen refers to it in 'Pride and Prejudice'.

It was a book of excerpts from poems prose etc and was revised and published for over 100 years.

I have a number of oldish books. My most treasured is a gardening week by week book which belonged to my grandfather and published in the 20s. I still use it but it is falling apart.

Other books are a couple of books owned by my childhood mum - girls stories. I also have A Christmas Carol gifted to me in the 50s by a relative. It belonged to her son who had been killed as a pilot in the Canadian airforce, I also have a book of a cartoon cat called Felix which belonged to an uncle and must date back to the 20s

It is lucky they survived as my mother was an inveterate thrower outer, and only a very few of my books survived - none from my very young days.

We have a 'birthday book' that has been in DH's family for generations. It has an entry for lots of family members from the early 1800s.

I have cookery books which an elderly neighbour gave me about 30 years ago - they had been her mother's.

And we have a huge number of dentistry text books which were in the roof of a practice DH bought from a man who was retiring. He had bought the practice and the books from a man who was retiring.

I wish we had kept the treadle drill rather than the books.

One of my mother ‘s … possibly 1932. ‘ Queechy’

Second hand …

Depends. I own a set of seven volumes of Shakespeare plays which my great grandfather bought second in 1856.
But the oldest book I purchased was “Pauper’s cookbook” by Jocasta Innes when I moved to the UK, in 1972.
I have no books from my childhood, they were so precious and rare in the Third World that they were passed on to other children when one grew out of them. That is probably why I’m now so acquisitive and hang on to my books for dear life!

I have Janet and John, book One, from 1949.

I have my mother's copy of ' The Girl of the Limberlost ' I can't remember the author.