A Peek at My Collection of Antique Books

There is one thing that I absolutely love, and that is books.  Old books, new books, hardback, and paperback. My dearest love is my collection of antique readers and story books. I have one bookcase devoted to them. Today, I took them down lovingly, one by one and took their pictures.  Some are faded and their color lacking, others you can see the original colors and the images inside.  I am not a professional with the camera, so these might not be the best quality photos, but they serve their purpose.  So without further ado, I present, shelf one of my antique book collection.

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These first two books are some of my oldest. One is a phonetic’s book from 1855  and the other is a Children’s Reading Primer published in 1935.

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My two Frank Baum books, just make me happy and smile when I look at them. So detailed and so colorful.  This copy of The Wizard of Oz  was published in 1956 and The Land of Oz The Further Adventures of The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman was published in 1960.  Again, prized possessions.

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This is the Jules Verne Book that led to The Castaways of the flag first published in 1923 in England.  This is the later adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson. This edition was published in 1924.  It has the original cloth binding with the attached front cover illustration. If I only had the dust Jacket.

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This textbook is from the Alabama public school system and was a music book for children in the primary grades. Published in 1964.

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This colorful reader is from 1960 and was issued to the school children in Kentucky.  It is filled with barnyard animal stories and other short stories to fire the young reader’s imagination.

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The final book is from 1941 and was issued to school age children to promote good health. They learned about teeth, posture, how the muscles work, how the ears work,  and exercise.

Hope you enjoyed wandering through my bookcase and seeing my special books. Perhaps I will share more another day. There are three more shelves filled to the brim. Let me know about your favorite books and send pictures. I love looking at the covers and illustrations of old books.

 

 

 

 

28 thoughts on “A Peek at My Collection of Antique Books”

  2. What a wonderful collection. I also have some really old books packed away due to space. Now I’m going to have dig them out. I have quite a few Nancy Drew books from the 30’s, some even with the original paper jacket cover. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Oh I would love to see that! I have one Nancy Drew from the 50’s. She is in bad shape. I let my niece have my Nancy Drew collection a long time ago, She told my daughter that she could have it back! I hope you share yours! I would love to see them.

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  4. These are lovely books. My husband is big collector of old books. (In fact he probably all but runs a home for them. ) And I love tooled books. I have them strategically scattered around the house so to see these ones is wonderful.

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      1. Lol. At point he had 3000 books but we moved house two years ago and….well, as I said to him during one tug of war, ‘Why do you need ten copies of Tom Sawyer? So now we have about 1000. We have the space it was just the moving of these books was impossible. But you are right, there is something about old books and rough edged books and I much prefer a book to kindle. The feel, the smell. Obviously the old books were not amongst those given to charity.

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      2. Wow a thousand and even still three thousand. That would make one spectacular home library! I have a small space, so I only have 2 full length bookcases. I send the rest to my children and grandchildren. lol

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  5. Out of all my 10+2 children, I opted to homeschool my two youngest (sons), after an altercation with my 2nd grader’s principal over a bullying incident involving four 6th graders ganging up on him. They said, “pecking order.” I said, “Same age is pecking order. 12 yr olds on a 7 yr old is bullying.” I removed him from public school that instant.

    My boys were 7 1/2 and 3, respectively. My 3 yr old (now nearly 26) insisted that he was going to join his brother’s “classroom” (the coffee table in our living room😁). I told him that if he did, he was not to get frustrated if he had a hard time keeping up, as this was going to be 3rd grade work. His response? “I can do it!”

    So cute.

    I took my boys to a ‘junk store’ that carried a large inventory of old books and gave them the option of choosing books that would increase their reading skills (all of my children had rudimentary reading skills by age 3). The older of the two – Sam – picked several “Dick and Jane” books, as well as The Wizard of Oz book in your first picture.

    Mikey, the 3yr old, chose…get this…an 1700’s Primer that taught reading via verses from the KJV Bible, and another from the 1800’s that added fairy tales and nursery ryhmes from that era. Then he chose a Hardy Boys mystery, “…for next week, after I read good.”!

    ((FYI: without Mikey, I would never have gotten through college level Algebra (I enrolled in college at 50 yrs of age…he was 14+/-)…and he still loves his KJV Bible!))

    I loved my collection of antique books, too, only I lost my original collection during some household move or another. I started building a collection anew, but will likely never be able to replace all those lovely, ‘full of the scent of history”, well handled, old texts I once had.

    Wonderful post!

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    1. I love your story of your sons and their book adventures. Making memories and getting somethign wonderful at the same time. I learned my love of old books from my Grandpa. He would take me to thrift stores when I was just little and pick me out a book. Since they were already old, they are ancient now! Love of books is learned and inherited. Lovely story! Share your collection photos.

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      1. There’s a blog post for another day! Just wish I still had all of my REALLY old ones! OH! My mom bought a HUGE colouring book, The Night Before Christmas, a bunch of years ago (thankfully, it came to me). It was only from 1974, but that’s forty years! I shared that on my Instagram a couple of minutes ago! 😀

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      6. Nope – my notifications just load funny; sometimes it will miss an entire day’s worth and sometimes it loads them out of order. I believe it’s because I have to rely on my phone’s hotspot signal, which is not always strong. Sorry! Was it the one about the anthology?

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  6. Love your collection! I like to pick up old books too, especially children’s books, if they’re not too expensive. I love the illustrations and to see if the story is still being printed, if it’s different than the old version.

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  9. Pingback: A Peek at My Collection of Antique Books | Londongrad

  10. I love old books, too. My son has a very nice collection. I dare not touch them and damage them. But now we are in the digital world. Where will we be in another 100 years in the evolution of reading material? Something to ponder…

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