Scrapbook views of life…

I was very surprised to see how many views my short little piece on Robin Hood was fortunate to have. But then perhaps it’s not really surprising. Old books have always drawn booklovers to them and a post about one is no different.

When I think about it, it is perhaps the ONLY thing I regret about an e-book. That one can’t fossick through a glorious second book stall/market/shop picking up titles, flipping through, smelling the elderly paper, revelling in drawings by Ransome, Shepherd, Atwell, Greenaway and so forth. There’s no denying that our e-books will be there for readers into eternity, but olde books are really something special.

And whilst this next book I want to share isn’t exactly an olde fiction book, it is an old book. Another one of my father’s from his childhood… an old-fashioned scrapbook and I love it for its close-up view of society at the time.

I leave you to make up your own mind.

There is another scrapbook… a magnificent thick Victorian scrapbook that I adore. It belonged to an elderly great aunt and I was tickled when she gave it to me when I turned eight. It is filled with Victorian cards, stickers, scrap cuttings from magazines, dried flowers, sayings… a truly dimensional social history. I might pop that on the blog one day as well!