The personal dedications one finds in secondhand books are often as fascinating as the text. In honour of this, we're starting a new series showcasing my most intriguing finds
See what you make of this message to Dad from Safei in a copy of A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Secondhand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, London, in 1951. Photograph: John Chillingworth/Hulton-Deutsch Collection
CDs, DVDS, and e-reads are all well and good when it comes to gift-giving at Christmas, but as far as I'm concerned, for sheer emotional wallop, the old-fashioned physical book is hard to beat. After all, it's the ideal opportunity to foist a well-loved novel onto someone who is now morally obliged to read the thing (and, indeed, profess to like it). Furthermore, there is generous scope / enough rope to let a carefully-chosen book speak volumes about how you feel about the receiver. For this reason, no book-as-gift is complete without a handwritten dedication on its inside cover to further make it clear, just in case there was any doubt, that the recipient absolutely MUST READ THIS BOOK AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL OTHERS!!!
With this in mind, about a year ago I wrote a piece for the Guardian confessing my bibliophilic kink of hanging around secondhand bookshops in the hope of picking up and taking home with me one or more of these discarded gifts – and the more candid the dedication within the better. These dedications offer fascinating glimpses into their books' own secret histories, imbuing the physical objects with an emotional resonance independent of – or intriguingly linked to – the actual texts. For, often, the choice of book coupled with the message within can suggest a narrative of its own. (Such as the copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's Words, addressed to "mummy" with the instructions that she "read it all without prejudice", including, one presumes, the cover artwork with its text reading: "I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it.") In the 12 months since my original piece, my kink – driven by a combination of love of stories and plain old human curiosity (tinged with an element of voyeurism, no doubt) – has blossomed into a fully-fledged habit. It has given birth to a blog and now, a new series which will look at a different secondhand book and dedication from my collection each fortnight
Full piece at The Guardian
With this in mind, about a year ago I wrote a piece for the Guardian confessing my bibliophilic kink of hanging around secondhand bookshops in the hope of picking up and taking home with me one or more of these discarded gifts – and the more candid the dedication within the better. These dedications offer fascinating glimpses into their books' own secret histories, imbuing the physical objects with an emotional resonance independent of – or intriguingly linked to – the actual texts. For, often, the choice of book coupled with the message within can suggest a narrative of its own. (Such as the copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's Words, addressed to "mummy" with the instructions that she "read it all without prejudice", including, one presumes, the cover artwork with its text reading: "I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it.") In the 12 months since my original piece, my kink – driven by a combination of love of stories and plain old human curiosity (tinged with an element of voyeurism, no doubt) – has blossomed into a fully-fledged habit. It has given birth to a blog and now, a new series which will look at a different secondhand book and dedication from my collection each fortnight
Full piece at The Guardian
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