What’s the oldest book you own and how did you get it?

Unless I'm forgetting something, the earliest book in my library is a very small 1625 Roman history compilation; it measures slightly under 6 by 12 cm. It's interesting in how much time passes in it. The front endpapers have a small annotation from someone in 1704. The editor of one of the sections, meanwhile, died in the 1580s. It's also quite well-preserved, with a rather tight binding. Unfortunately, there's no great story behind my acquisition of it; it was simply purchased at auction.

The most amusing early book that always comes to my mind, however, is an 1812 copy of Scott's Marmion. The printed book itself is in no way remarkable: a later edition with a text block in decent condition but separated covers. However, the front endpapers have an inscription, possibly dating to 1820, explaining that the former owner of the book "now lies at the bottom of the Atlantic," having fallen off the top of the main mast of a ship whose name I can't quite discern, and that if the current owner isn't careful, he will suffer the same fate. On the other side, there is a little drawing of a ship with a caption near the mainmast of "there he goes." I purchased this from a charming little bookstore I frequent, as part of an unusual instance of the bookseller selling books on consignment from a friend of theirs, who, if I recall, was selling part of her late father's collection.

As far as works notable in themselves, I could point to the second edition of Mary Shelley's The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (this explanation is somewhat from memory, so please forgive any inaccuracies). The first edition of the book was published in 1839, and, of course, as an attempt at a complete posthumous collection of Percy Shelley's poetry, needed to address the issue that publishing Queen Mab was legally dangerous, even for a well-regarded, respectable publisher like Edward Moxon. Thus Mary Shelley cut out the particularly atheistic passages of Queen Mab, and, for some reason (perhaps because they were already censoring his words), all the dedications to Percy Shelley's first wife...

Needless to say, this did not go over well in literary circles. And thus, only a few months later, Shelley published a second edition with Moxon, where both the atheistic passages and the dedications were present.

This put the English government in an embarrassing situation. Prosecuting the publication years before of a blasphemous work by a young poet published piratically was no significant matter; now, with time and death to make notable the author, and a pirate press replaced by a respectable publisher, it was, and risked making the country seem uncultured. It seems that the government would really have preferred to ignore the whole thing, but were pushed into bringing it to trial. And as it was a trial by jury, even though Moxon's lawyer was himself notable enough to now have a Wikipedia page, the government could not control the verdict, and Moxon was convicted.

Apparently, however, this embarrassment was handled by simply ignoring the verdict. Moxon was seemingly never actually punished at all: some sources just don't mention it and move on to his continuing to publish other works without pause; others outright point out that he doesn't appear to have been punished. Supposedly, the books were ordered to be destroyed, and the passages ordered to be removed from future publications, but it's unclear that ever even started taking place.

I have a 1937 edition of Alice in Wonderland, and I got it as part of my collection of editions of Alice in Wonderland that I've been slowly building up over the years. I might have an older one but the oldest dated edition is 1937. Where I live I'm lucky to have a proper antiquarian bookshop which has some really lovely old books in, this copy came from there I think. It was expensive but not ridiculously so - maybe £10-15 or thereabouts.

On the old books front I went to a talk recently where we got to look closely at - but not touch - a mid 13th century book. That was pretty amazing.

I have some late 18th century plays that are (regrettably) falling to pieces due to age and having been stored improperly throughout their lives. My uncle gave them to me, and before that they belonged to my great grandfather, and before that, it's hard to say. They likely passed through my great great grandfather's hands as well, though I have some of his books and he had a tendency to write his name inside of all of his stuff, so they could have come from elsewhere.

I have an old "health" book from the 1947. It's hilarious. It tells women it's a sin to be fat. I like to bust it out at parties and have a laugh.

I have several books from about 150 to 100 years ago. Some taxidermy books I specifically sought out and purchased; a book on bookbinding from 1902 that I inherited; a book of kids games ("sport") I found in a thrift store; a copy of The Young Visiters that I found cheaper to buy in an early reprint than a modern one. (That's not quite 100 yet.)

I have an interest in, and will purchase in reasonably priced originals or reprints, historical fiction with strong sexual content or western historical erotica pre-photography. Fanny Hill, fabliaux, Les Liaisons dangereuses, stuff of that nature. Reasonably priced originals are not easy to come by, however.

Late 1800's if I remember correctly. Probably one of the more interesting books has an inscription from 1931. It was apparently aboard the SS Caledonia and has a Cunard Line baggage decal on the inside cover. I have a favorite bookstore in Syracuse that has plenty of interesting old books.

I have a first edition of Silas Marner.

It was given to me by my great aunt many, many years ago. She received it as a gift herself, though who she got it from varies by when she told the story. My great aunt was a rather wonderful woman. One of her most loved traits was never telling the same story the same way twice. She didn't make things up really, just had fun with details.

One version of the book gifting was a birthday present from her uncle (probably the truth based on what my grandmother has said). But the variations on that include it being given to her at different ages, or in one version that the book was given to her after being stolen from a private collection.

Another story line had it being gifted by a long lost lover named George. Her implication while telling it was that the author was her lover. The author died nearly forty years before she was born, but that didn't seem to bother her. She would claim with a straight face that she was 29 every year. When she passed she was a few months from 100.

Don't get me wrong, she wasn't lying. She just chose to tell stories that were more fun than reality. She never claimed any of them were true. She might as well have had "based on a true story" tattooed on her head lol. The most basic facts were always accurate. The events happened. Just not in this leg of the pants of time.

And since not only did she have fun telling the stories, but everyone had fun hearing them, nobody really minded never having the exact truth.

So nobody ever got tired of her telling the same stories over and over either. She'd sit there, pretty as a picture, dressed to the nines with perfect makeup. She'd have a cup of coffee (never a mug, mugs were for commoners), sit it in the saucer between sips. She'd have a Salem cigarette lightly held between two fingers. And then she'd spin yet another yarn out of the threads of memory and imagination.

Alas, I've carried on the tradition within the family. I'm not as fluid with it as she was, and the younger generation rolls their eyes more than mine did, but we have fun with it still. I've told no less than ten versions of my first hunting trip with my grandfather over the years. The only things that remain the same are the tree stand, my grandfather, and my fumble fingers slipping when I tried to lower the rifle to half cock and sending a round into the air. Everything else changes each time I tell it. The weather, how high the tree stand was, the presence of an actual deer that took off running from right under the stand, etc.

She really was an incredible woman

I have a travel guide to London, published in 1818: "Leigh's New Picture of London".

It's relatively compact: 14cm tall x 9cm wide. It's obviously designed to fit into a pocket. But, at 4cm thick, it's going to create a big bulge!

It's definitely showing signs of wear after 200 years (I just realised this is its bicentennial!). One corner of the front cover has worn away, some of the pages are crinkled, and so on. Despite this, I think its most fascinating aspect are the intact fold-out maps. Some of the maps have been neatly cut out and removed from the book, but the remaining maps are still fully intact and nearly undamaged.

I stumbled across it in a second-hand bookshop while I was on holiday some years ago. I always visit local second-hand bookshops when I'm another city or town. To be absolutely blunt, I bought it just because it's old (and it was cheap because of its deteriorated condition - it's not a collector's piece by any means!). I was fascinated by the idea of owning a book this old.

Other notable old books I own are:

• A book about the history of European exploration of Australia, published in 1888 to mark the centenary of European settlement.

• A first edition of 'The Federal Story: The Inner History of the Federal Cause' by Alfred Deakin, published posthumously in 1944 - from the library of Professor J A La Nauze, a historian who wrote a two-volume biography of Alfred Deakin (the front page is signed by the Professor La Nauze).

• A first edition of 'The Hugo Winners', with introductions by Isaac Asimov, published in 1963.

• A first edition of 'Time Enough for Love' by Robert A Heinlein, published in 1973.

Well, my dad was a big national geographic collector. We have the full collection up until about 2000. I think that's pretty cool :).

I think the most interesting part is to look back at old advertisements. Some are hella sexist and I find it a bit funny to see how we had such stark lines drawn in the sand about the roles women and men held.

I think it's one of my copies of the Quran, it should be somewhere around 50 to 100 years old, but I can't be sure. It's my grandma's. She probably got it from her mom. She can't make much use of it anymore because of her health (she's well over 90, but we don't know for sure the exact age), so I keep it as a family item.

Apart from that, I have some prints from 40s to 60s I grabbed from second hand shops here and there. I like old books but do not really collect, I only buy them if they are recent enough to be useful. If I had something older than a 100 years old, I'd probably give it away to a library where it would've been preserved better and would serve a greater public, of course after reading and maybe scanning it (I would dig something like this that did not cost a fortune and was maybe mobile, it's really hard to scan a book w/o hurting it with a conventional scanner attached to a printer).