A Few Precious Books from My Grandmother

Because my parents both came from large families (I have over 50 first cousins and countless second and third cousins, spread around Canada and the United States), and because they moved so much, we are not the kind of family that has a lot of family heirlooms passed on from generation to generation. But we are a family who loves books, as I have written before, and I do have a very small handful of books that were my late maternal grandmother's. These are very precious to me. One is a small (about 5" by 7") hardbound volume, with a flower-sprigged and gold-gilted cover, of Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." It is inscribed to "Fleta" (my grandmother's wonderful old-fashioned name), "Merry Xmas! 25-12-06." My grandmother would have recently graduated from high school at the time. It says volumes to me that this book would be considered an appropriate Christmas present for a young woman; somehow I can't imagine many families or friends today giving such a gift (alas!). Another book has her full married name inscribed in it, so she got it a bit later: an even smaller volume, in a dark green hard cover, titled "Masterpieces of the World's Best Literature, Vol. 8" (1905). I am not sure what happened to the other volumes in this series; perhaps some of my aunts, uncles, or cousins have them, or perhaps they have been lost over time. Some of the selections in this book, listed alphabetically by author's last name (this volume contains S-Z) and with great leaps through history, are essays, poems, stories or excerpts by Shelley, Smollett, Socrates, Sophocles, Stowe (Harriet Beecher), Thackeray, Tolstoy, Trollope, Turgenieff (the spelling this book uses), Washington (George), Whitman, Wordsworth, and Zola. Note that in this book, the "world's" best literature was heavily English, with a very few token Greek, Russian, and French authors represented. A third book, still smaller, with a textured brown cover and with my grandmother's married name written in her own handwriting on the flyleaf (why do we seldom use the word "flyleaf" nowadays?), is Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha"; this particular volume was published in 1898. These three lovely little volumes -- all so full of character, beauty, and literary history -- sit on my bookshelf, representing my family and in particular my dear grandmother (a teacher as well as mother of seven). I cherish them.