Inscription inside a copy of Robert W. Service’s ‘The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses’, bought in Robin Hood’s Bay, Oct 2005. It’s a first edition, 1907.
It reads:
April 24th to May 3rd
A small token given with every good wish, in grateful remembrance of a most pleasant trip.
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke” – Rudyard Kipling from ‘The Betrothed’
(full text of The Betrothed, for those interested)
I love finding stuff like this in second hand books. This one struck me in particular as I was browsing through a tiny second-hand bookshop in Robin Hood’s Bay, a wonderful place in and of itself. The book caught my eye as Robert Service was a writer that my dad much admired. I’d picked up the book to leaf through it and on seeing the inscription, knew immediately that I had to buy it.
Why? A couple of things. Not only was this a first edition in remarkably good nick for a book nearly a century old, April 24th was my dad’s birthday. And the reference to Kipling – my in-laws lived at the time in East Sussex, in a little village called Burwash, where Kipling also lived. He had a house there called Bateman’s, which we’d walked the dogs past many many times.
Kipling’s house dates back to 1634, about a hundred years after the wonderful house where my in-laws lived!
On a tangent (I’m good at them), this is Leo, the door-knocker on their house. Isn’t he a handsome kitty?
So, dear reader. What’s the best/most interesting thing you’ve ever found in a book?
espresso coco 
What a lovely post 🙂 I love writing that goes in spirals. You have prompted me to go and dig out one of the old books on my shelves, which were pre-owned by my grandmother…..thank you