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More books with stories

5 Jul 2012

This is a guest post by Gareth Temple, a great collector of English-language Baedekers and friend of the site. Perhaps other visitors might like to write about their books with stories? Just send them to me at the usual e-mail address.

After reading the letter recently published in the Guardian "Every book has a story to tell". I thought it might be of interesting to share the details of some of my own collection of Baedeker guides which, I believe, may have had previous owners of some historical note.

Firstly I have 1882 Northern Italy which I believe was once owned by W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. It is inscribed on the front end paper with his name and address. The address in question is Grim's Dyke, Harrow Weald, where Gilbert lived for the last two decades of his life. He died while attempting to save a girl from drowning in his lake. Lady Gilbert lived there until her death in 1936.

I also have a 1902 Southern France which according to the inscription on the front end paper, may once have been owned, during the 1930's, by Gertrude Stein. The book is inscribed with her name and address in Billignin, Belley, France.

Not quite so significant, but still interesting, is a particularly fine 1896 copy of South Western France previously owned by a Robert Peet Skinner, who I have discovered was the U.S. Consul to Marseille at the time. Later, amongst other things, he became U.S. Consul General to London and Berlin, U.S. Minister to Greece and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. The almost unused condition of the book may well have been due to his having been rather preoccupied during his time as Consul in Marseilles, with an outbreak of the Plague!

Finally, I own a copy of 1898 copy of South Eastern France, once owned by one James Merrimam (J.M.) Archer-Thompson, a pioneering British rock climber and mountaineer. In keeping with a man who wrote some of the first guides to climbing in North Wales, he made some interesting pencil notes within the book, some of which notably corrected what he saw as errors with Baedeker's published heights of peaks in the area. Archer-Thompson sadly took his own life by drinking carbolic acid a few years later.

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