Books for the Bookwyrm - Review of A Day with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by May Byron.

My father sold my childhood house. I found out yesterday. We had not even known it was up for sale. Yes, he had said this summer that he was wanting to move and looking at houses, but it was said without hurry or urgency and he often discusses at great length and in great detail many things that never come to pass; and it had never been mentioned again, so I didn't think too much of it. But it sold, sight unseen, and he has less than two weeks to be out. The shock is real.

Yesterday he called to ask if I wanted "a bunch of old family books." This little bookwyrm said YES... and within minutes of returning from driving my son to work there he was on the doorstep, one large car STUFFED full of books and an old barrister bookcase. I will not share how we managed to get that HEAVY bookcase into the house as I neither want to lie, nor cause anyone nightmares. Suffice to say it was an adventure I'd never like to repeat.

Kat and I carefully unpacked the books, sorted those with notes from ancestors from those without, and then by decade, to begin assessing what we had inherited. 

The bookcase is large. It has now taken over the dark corner of our living room, and looms over my chosen sofa. We have organized the books by type, and I will be alphabetizing the books on each shelf today. The shelves are as follows: 

Poetry

Bibles and faith-based books, (this is the shelf at my short-little-mouse eye level) 

Classics

Books by authors I don't readily recognize

and Childrens/Young Adult books

There are treasures here. Newspaper clippings used as bookmarks, and wildflowers pressed between pages. Handwritten dedications to ancestors long gone. An enormous copy of Shakespeare that I used to sneak-read every summer, because I was afraid it was too old to be handled by young people. (When she finally caught me, Mummy told me I never needed to hide that I was reading books, because an unread book is a crime!) A breathtakingly beautiful Christmas picture book from a bygone era. Books I had already planned to read, and books I have never heard of. And I intend to read them all, because - as Mummy said - an unread book is a crime!

The first book on the top shelf is A Day with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by May Byron. A slim little book, only 48 pages long, it smells like basement, book glue that's gone orange and smells vanillic, and old, heavy paper. The spine is nearly torn free and crackles softly as I turn the pages, like poplar leaves in the fall. 

The book is a sweet accounting of a single day, at Elizabeth Barrett Browning's home in Florence, Italy. There are beautiful full-color illustrations by Norman Price, and the writing has the florid feel of a time long gone. I was there, listening to her son, Pennini's laughter. I could feel the air stir with the flutterings as he handed strawberries around to the Hawthornes and other guests. And with a sigh, and all too soon, the tiny book was finished. 

As there are no inscriptions within the cover, I will imagine that this book came from the Cole side of our family, as Gramma's family could afford - and owned - many books. I am imagining that Gramma's mother, Elizabeth Eunice Cole (nee: Roberts) thoroughly enjoyed this book as a young lady, while sitting under an oak tree one beautiful autumn day... because doesn't she look like she would enjoy a romantic peek at the day of a bygone poet? Perhaps she sat reading this on an old quilt, carried overseas by her father, when he immigrated to the US from Wales. I never met my great grandmother, as she died 18 years before I was born. But I will imagine that this was her book. 

Now to choose another book for this little bookwyrm to devour.