#classic library

The Morgan Library, New York

JUST beauty

クラシックライブラリーオータムスカイ - Classic Library Autumn Sky

29.12.2019. Found these while reorganizing my shelf. These Classic Library editions of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre are some of my all time favourites! The golden lettering really stands out in contrast with the dark leather. Perfect additions to my bookshelf!

When I was about ten, Mum bought me the eight books in the first picture, a couple at a time, from Kmart, until I had them all. I'm pretty sure they were $5 a book, which might sound like a lot for a kid, but Mum and Grandma had been buying me things like Kipling and Bronte since I was about eight, and they knew I took care of my books. They're nice editions, unabridged, with eight full colour plates of illustrations in each. Even after the better part of thirty years, the pages are still bright white, so for cheap hardbacks, they used REALLY low acid paper for circa 1990. They're also a proper sewn binding, not just glue. Fast foward twenty five years. I find a book, in a charity shop, that matches my books. But it is one I do not own. It is one I never knew existed. I had always had weird recurring dreams of finding more books to match my treasured set of eight. TURNS OUT THEY WERE TRUE. Cue an internet trawling, which yielded a final number of twenty four titles in the series. Over the last year or so, I've found three in charity shops and bought five from the internet. I have a massive list of things I want to buy - most of them books - but I decided that what I really wanted for my birthday this year was to complete the set. So here it is. They're all imperfect in some way - scratches, dents, the odd ex-owner's name, and two badly faded spines, but the whole collection is together, after twenty six years of being incomplete. Alice in Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte What Katy Did Next - Susan Coolidge What Katy Did - Susan Coolidge The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain Hard Times - Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol & Cricket on the Hearth - Charles Dickens Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson What Katy Did at School - Susan Coolidge Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe Little Women - Louisa May Alcott Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - Kate Douglas Wiggin The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling Black Beauty - Anna Sewell The Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea - Jules Verne Around The World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne Heidi - Johanna Spyri The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & The Beach of Falsea - Robert Louis Stevenson Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett Some of them I've read lots of times over the years, some, not since I was a kid, and a small amount are completely new to me despite being classics. I can't wait to dive in. I LOVE CLASSIC LIT. The rest of my birthday present was three queer YA titles, but I'll take a picture of those later, when I've covered them. :)

Reading timeless

Light academia

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