These books are rumpled, written on and one is even charred along its bottom edge: the result a narrow escape when it sat on a metal shelf above a spontaneously combusting homemade hifi system. Every book has a story to tell, or rather three stories: the one in the book itself, the story of the people who read it and perhaps had their lives changed by it and then the history of the artifact, the book itself.
When my mum died five years ago, a friend advised me, if you’re in doubt about whether to keep something or dispose of it, keep it: you can always send it to the charity shop later. I didn’t really need her encouragement because these books had fascinated me since childhood when I browsed through our book cupboard in the hall. The lofty book cupboard had previously been a linen or kitchen cupboard at the time when there were domestic servants in what had been a Victorian mill owner’s villa. It had tall sliding doors and I can still remember the sound as I opened them.
Each of these books which date from my parents’ school days, has it’s own individual story and I’m fascinated to see the hand written comments that they added. Someone, probably ‘E. Sparkes’, a previous owner of the book, has coloured the chapter headings and the portrait of ‘Alpha’ himself, the author of the essays collected in this August 1921 edition in the ‘King’s Treasuries of Literature’ series.