The oldest book you own?

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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.

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 😇😁

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.