Carpe Libris

Like a lot of people who buy used books, I’ve managed to accumulate quite a few that feature the former owners' names.  Most often, people write their names on the endpapers. Sometimes a name will be stamped, printed on an address-style label, or will be featured on a decorative bookplate.  Below is a list of titles with the names of people who, at one time, owned a book that I now possess. (I'll update this list with new acquisitions as needed.) 

 This post is kind of a public announcement and acknowledgement to the former owners (or their ghosts). Obviously this is not as serious as the obligatory adoption notices you'll find in the classified section of a newspaper, but that practice keeps coming to mind. Anyway, I’m grateful that these works are part of my collection, and I’m happy I have some common interests with a slew of specific strangers, however remote.

John Ashbery, Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Albert Tsugawa

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, Robert W. Paisley

Bergson/Merdith, Comedy, Caroline Trapp

Yves Bonnefoy, Early Poems, Pour Elisa from Gareth

Yves Bonnefoy, Poems 1959 to 1975, Harry M. Sartain (?)

Henri Bosco, Farm Theotime, To Violet from Elizabeth

Dino Buzzati, Tartar Steppe, The Smiths

Bernard Cache, Earth Moves, Marc

Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan, Graham Shearing 89

Robert Creeley, Selected Poems, To Debbie from Steven

e.e. cummings, Collected Poems, Rosemary F. Levehter

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Cruso, Allen C. Kaetzky

William Faulkner, The Hamlet, Suzanne

Gustav Flaubert, Temptation of S. Anthony, James D. O’brien

James, G. Frazer, Golden Bough, George W. Waters

Hamlin Garland, Main Traveled Roads, Peter S. Marlee (?)

J. W. Goethe, Elective Affinities, Max Jones

William Golding, The Spire, Amy Simons

Julian Green, The Dark Journey, Sadie Katz New York City

Martin Heidegger, Language, Thought, and Poetry, Elmore J. De Grange

Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, Juania Lee Davis

Franz Kafka, Amerika, Richard B. Vowels Vice Council of the United States

Franz Kafka, The Trial,  Phelps/a. Rehner/T. Bozik/M. Carlsen

D. H. Lawrence, Pansies, Clint Harvic

D. H. Lawrence, Selected Poems, R.K.

D. H. Lawrence, Viking Portable, Jim McDowell

Jakov Lind, Soul of Wood, G. Marloy Gaspar (?)

Stephane Mallarme, Poems of Mallarme, I. Cearrs 1955 (?)

Herman Melville, Confidence Man, Danny C. Gunnels

Herman Melville, Israel Potter, Edwin T. Moul

Herman Melville, Mardi, Eva Felicite Middlebury

Herman Melville, Selected Writings, Robert W. Sauder

W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology, Christine Versor (?)

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister, Brian C. Riley

Benjamin Peret, From the Hidden Storehouse, Jim Tnivgham (?)

St. John Perse, Eclogues, Robert Strew (?)

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, Mary E. Schawrtz

Ezra Pound, Selected Cantos, di Piro 775 5125

Rainer Maria Rilke, New Poems, Mike Timmins

Ranier Maria Rilke, Stories of God, Manny Theiner

Jules Supervielle, Selected Writings, To Tim from Robert

Nathanial West, Miss Lonely Hearts and Day of the Locust, Amy Slavin