Ode to Antiquity

No this isn't going to be some boring Keats poem about a Grecian urn (no offense, Keats. Byron, Blake and Donne are my main men). I have been somehow handed the position of "Special Collections Librarian" which is right up my alley and would be lovely were it not for all the other ersatz positions I am already filling. But the more time spent in a basement with dusty papers, the happier this Librarienne is. And we have a LOT of dusty old local papers from the mid 1800s to early 1900s, so I was pleased at this variety.

Imagine my surprise when out of a local grocery paper bag on the bottom shelf emerges this ANCIENT Bible. Leather over a wooden front and back cover, two straps with brass fasteners to keep the book closed, folio-bound pages. I was astounded and tried in vain to find a copyright date...it was certainly post-printing-press but I had glorious hopes of it being older than 1800 at least. The director gaped for about five minutes at it and promptly called appraisers in a panic that this might need to be insured and climate controlled and all that, but my guess was that it wasn't medieval in origin and as it was all in the old German script, which I read to a small extent, I didn't think it would be fetching an astronomical sum because those Germans went a bit nuts with the Bible production.

The next day, after doing some reading about where to look for further information in the Bible (no title page seemed to exist, although no pages seemed to be missing either) I found it on the New Testament page....get this....the thing was published in 1734. I am as protective of it as I would be of my own child....no scratch that, you can have more kids but this book is not going to reproduce itself.

It's hardly Smithsonian-worthy but for a smallish city library, it was quite a find. We're going to have to get a locked glass case and other whatnot for it now. Friends are sick of hearing me talk about it already but they will just have to suffer through my enthusiasm.