/lit/ - Literature

'Byron's Works' (1823)

>>1606681
What's it like? is it a good book?
Also, where can you get books that old?

Used to have a book of scottish poems from 1738, it wasn't worth anything.

The Poetical Works of William Cowper (1861)

That's the oldest book I own, unless there's an even older one hiding in a box somewhere that I've forgotten about.

>>1606689

It's part of a complete collection of the poetry of Lord George Gordon Byron (pictured). This particular edition features some of his better short poems and 'Manfred', which Nietzsche was apparently very fond of.

1916 copy of Aristotle's politics. Has a signature from 1918 of someone, with the name of an oxford college, if I remember right.

>>1606704

Oh, and I pick texts like these up at antiquarian/academic bookstores; Edinburgh (which is where I live) is absolutely crawling with them, other cities mightn't be as lucky.

A suede-bound "Essays of Elia", by Charles Lamb, from about 1918. If I still have it, it's at my parents' house.

First edition of Talcott Parson's English translation of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism from 1930.

Rescued it from some dumb bitch who was selling her recently deceased grandfathers stuff at a swap meet for $5.

"Preaching and Public Speaking", 1879, some Mormon bullshit by a BYU scholar before BYU was a thing.
Got it for 10 cents.

Those are most of my older books:
(Lord Byron, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anton Chekhov, R.W Emerson, Sir Walter Scott, John Milton, Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Thomas Carlyle, Percy Shelley - from top to bottom).
They range from 1820-1918

An 1858 print of the bible. The weird thing is I only keep it BECAUSE it's the oldest book I got. If it wasn't it would be someone elses by now - I'm not at all religious. That's besides the point though. It's in pretty good nick.

Besides that I have second edition HP Lovecraft At The Mountains Of Madness.

i have this chemistry book from pre 1900. it's from my hs library.

Encyclopedia from 1934. Entry for Adolf Hitler: "German leader".

I've got a student-reader collection of German stories from 1900. There might be something else, but I don't think there is.

"The women of Goethe" (it's in old German though) from the mid 1800s. There's a really sweet little message to the girl this guy bought the book for, who was studying at Oxford.

Just about all of you have me beat. My oldest book is a first edition of the Silmarillion.

I have a first edition collection of Kipling short stories including Riki Tiki Tavi and some other familiar ones. It's at my moms and I can't remember the name of it but it was published before The Jungle Book so it was made before 1895.

I can't imagine it has any monetary value though. The cover is plain green and the pages are pretty pulpy

L'imagination by Sartre 1949-50

>>1606926

>Goethe
>1800
>Old German

>>1606963
Okay, allow me to be pedantic; "Old" German.

Mid-1800s too.

derp.jpg

The oldest book I own right now was printed in 1719, the oldest book I've ever owned was printed in 1573 (give or take a couple of years iirc). I traded sold the latter book for money to buy a new computer several years ago. Isn't that Ironic. It was bound in vellum, printed in latin in Venice and had 23 full page woodcuts, but honestly I'm not the best steward for a time traveler like that. Better to have someone who paid for it to own it. I enjoy the memory and the experience of having discovered it at a library sale and researching, then selling it as much as handling the book itself. Especially considering it was in latin and about gymnastics.

>>1606963
I believe he's referring to the unfortunate habit of German printers to use this impenetrable gothic blackletter font.

<----This example isn't too bad, but I've seen it with much thicker type, and lines so closely set they practically bleed together.

>>1606982
German also seems to have changed more over the past 150 years compared to English. But the typeface is rather horrible, if kinda cool.