Sunday, April 1, 2018

The Literary Life of Used Books


I’ve come to consider used book stores and antique stores as depositories of our literary and social history. You can find just about anything you’re looking for on Amazon, but until you spend some time perusing and holding old books important in their day but largely forgotten now can you see a glimpse of American literary heritage.

I’ve found an old edition of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, a 1918 edition of Love Songs by Sara Teasdale (for a dollar!), The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (1926), The Speeches of Daniel Webster (1854), Ida Tarbell’s Life of Lincoln (1907), and more.


We’ve lived in Kirkwood, our suburb of St. Louis, for more than 30 years. When we moved here, an antique shop in the downtown area had been in operation for a long time. It was called Dappled Gray Antiques, and it was filled with the valuable and the not-so-valuable.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

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