Poems by Alan Ramsay

    The first book I want to tell you about is a book of poems by the scottish poet Allan Ramsay. I got the book at a second hand bookstore in England. I can't remember where exactly. The book is special to me because this edition was published in 1770. I love to carefully leaf through the book imagining all the people who touched this book as well.

    A book this old has been through a lot and the leather is dried and brittle. I hardly dare touch the book, not because it is very valuable money wise but it is by far the oldest book in my collection, and I treasure it.

    I know Allan Ramsay was born in Leadhill, Dumfrieshire. He was a wigmaker and bookseller. In 1713 he started to publish his own work. The book I have, "poems", was first published in 1728. He died in 1758. If anyone can tell me more about this poet please  let me know.

    What I also find intriguing about old books is the smell. The old dusty smell of more than two hundred years of bookcases in who knows how many houses. Maybe rich mansions or poor hovels, although poor people didn't use to be able to read so that's probably not very realistic. No, books with poems were read by people who had the skill and the time to read. Rich people, learned people. Yet I feel this little book has had a tough life. It's cracked, and has been written in. It's dirty and some old mildew has crept in long ago. Also there are a few ex-libris in it. One from Eliza Dixon, 1785, in beautiful handwriting. Another one from George Langstaff also beautifully written and yet another one from George Dixon Cockfield, also dated 1785. Who were these people? Where did they live? Were Eliza Dixon and George married? Or brother and Sister? Who was George Langstaff?

    All questions that can raise a multitude of possibilities and stories. That's why I love this old book. I don't even read it. I don't dare to. I fear to break it when I try to open it to wide. So I retired this old book. It deserves a long earned rest. I don't think it will survive another two hundred years. It will have turned to dust by then. It's humbling to know that I will have done so too in far fewer years!

   Another one of my gems is a whopper of a book. It's big and fat (35cm long, 26cm wide and 5cm thick). It's a facsimile of George Orwell's Nineteen-eighty-four. Its edited by Peter Davidson and it was published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. London in 1984. The book is a detailed account of how the book nineteen-eighty-four came to be. There is even a table in it in which the kinds of paper used, the blackness of the typing and number of leaves are put. In that way the editor has determined a chronology in which the book was written. Then follows a large facsimile and transcript of the book. Here you can see what Orwell put first and changed later. This is very instructive if you are a writer yourself. But it is also very enjoying to see the thoughts, the lines, even the words developing into a book. Also the pure craftsmanship is shown in this way.

    Orwell used handwriting and a machine. He used small sheets and large sheets. No well ordered structural 'one book, one notebook' kind of writer.

    Due to it's size the book stands out in my bookcase. I recently saw the book in a secondhand bookstore. It was locked away and cost about $45,-. I can't remember what I paid for it but it wasn't $45,-. I don't care what it is worth really. I wouldn't sell it anyway. I wouldn't sell any of my books.