Book Sale 2013 - Part 2: Inscriptions and Bookplates

Due to my own impatience with the crowds I neglected to look through the books last Saturday for great inscriptions. Thankfully choosing them based on their covers still brought a handful of inscriptions to my shelves. A favorite potential aspect of a used book is what owners or gifters have written inside. Especially since it opens a whole world of possibility for getting a glimpse into someone's world.

But before the inscriptions, here are two of my favorite bookplates:

This is not an inscription or a bookplate – but intrigued by a book of poems belonging to a “Sister Marian” I looked her up. She was a Deaconess of the United Lutheran Church and appears to have acquired this volume of poems while attending the Baltimore Lutheran Deaconess Motherhouse and Training School – at a location where now stands Coppin State University. Since the university moved to this address in 1950, Sister Marian would have been there some time before that and apparently long enough to have address labels made. There is a lovely collection of just over 800 photos from the Motherhouse on flicker and you can get an idea of what Sister Marian’s life was like – she could even be in one of the photos (link to photo collection).

 I had come up with this whole story in my head about the little nun sitting in her comfortable but austere little room reading from this collection poems about life outside her religious existence - but according to photos they played badminton, just like the nuns at the Sacre Coeur do in Amelie - so I now must re-frame my entire conception of Sister Marian.

On to the inscriptions!

 Any guesses on that name? Babbe, Bobbe, Bobbi? I'm going with Bobbe, but pronounced ridiculously.

The above is perfect -

To Our Darling Elly on her graduation from Syracuse University in gratitude for all the joy she has brought us.
Mother
Dad

June 2, 1952

This one made me laugh - flipping through the book I was seriously confused how "This book is especially written for people with birthday's in March...". This is 100% something my grandmother would write in a book she was giving as a gift.

To: Patty on 51st birthday - Patty obviously retired at the early age of 50 and has spent the last year enjoying her garden, Butch and Sue thus gave her the perfect book.

I wish they would have written in black rather than red ink:

Dear Folks -
This book is about friends & co-workers of Jane Phillips Cody and worked with her in Ecuador. Merry Christmas.
With Love,
Mom
Maude
Grandma O... (I'm pretty sure it says Oakes, but the 'O' appears to have been turned into a person wearing a tasseled fez and sitting in a canoe or on a surf board...I'm now disappointed I have been missing so many creative opportunities with the 'o' in my last name, I have never once put a fez on it.)

Dec. 1965

That's the end of the inscriptions - but I'll hopefully find time to post some of the great cover art and fantastic titles - here is a preview of one of my favorites!

The outfit, the exclamation mark - it's perfect, makes me giddy.