The upper shelf of my living room bookcase, far right side, holds some of my favorite volumes. All invoke memories of my uncle, Frank Oswald, who died of cancer way before his time, almost 40 years ago. Uncle Frank was a lover of books and I always looked forward to the volumes he would choose for me at Christmas and on my birthday.
Frank had fought in World War Ii and was stationed in London toward the end of the war. While there, he bought a number of nineteenth century volumes at a London used-book store. A few years before he died, when I was working on my M.A. in English Lit at the University of Chicago, he bought me the New Temple Shakespeare volumes. Published by J.M. Dent of London in 1935 and edited by M.R. Ridley, the New Temple Shakespeare includes scholarly annotation and a glossary of Elizabethan English. And they’re beautifully printed on fine paper. Knowing that Plutarch’s Lives — the source of some Shakespearian plots -- is central to the study of the bard, Frank also gave me his 1864 volume of Plutarch, as translated by Langhorne. In later years, my mother gave me some of the other treasures that Frank had found in London. All were printed between 1860 and 1905. They share the top shelf with Langhorne, Plutarch and Will. Among them is a volume of Philip Freneau poetry. Freneau was a poet of the American revolution, who isn’t widely read these days and his work isn’t highly regarded by scholars, but there was a personal connection: in the 1980s I lived just down the road from Freneau’s birthplace. This collection was printed in London in 1861, but it can’t be read in full, because the folios were never cut apart, so only two of every four pages can be read. http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=17704028&size=lg -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
