Ex libris Glacierman

It has some interesting notes added by a previous owner.



Original vellum binding; 12mo. Handy dandy little pocket sized book. This is the work of Daniel Elzevir and his cousin, Louis.

Wow! This is very special book, and I love the little notes and underlining - adds certain charm. (I hate underlining in books, but I guess it is OK in historical ones.)

Marginalia is often an enhancement to a book if the reader/annotator was important or well acquainted with the subject of the text.

James

I can remember reading an article some years ago in which the lady who wrote the article talked about things written in books. She had read an article by a major bookseller in which he said that things written in books should never be erased or removed. She said he dealt in books signed by famous people. She went on to mention a 1st edition of a major children's book that she had found that was in reasonably nice condition, except that it has the original owners name and Age 8 written in purple crayon in the front of the book, which hurt the books value considerably. She said apparently the dealer who said to never remove writing in a book had never come across anything as devastating as that purple crayon marking in a book. She pointed out that while some marking could improve a books value, some could be quite damaging to the book. And in the end it mainly matters what a future buyer thinks of the markings. I own a rare 1st edition book written by Oz author L. Frank Baum under the pseudonym of John Estes Cooke titled "Tamawaca Folks". It was written in fun about a resort community that the Baums owned a home at for the summers at Macatawa, Michigan. Baum mentions a number of his acquaintances at the park under assumed names, he also writes himself in as "Mr. Write" the author. He pokes fun at every one, including himself. The book was probably only sold in Macatawa in a small number of copies. Many of the original book owners wrote the name of the assumed real person next to the fictional name. My copy has several names written in pencil in the book, but I would never remove them. In this case I think they add interest to the book if not value.