Do you ever highlight, underline, or add your own notes and musings into the margins of your own books? Do you dog-ear your pages? Upon discovering this 1963 Gazette editorial in the archives, we felt inspired to put the following question out there to all book lovers and bibliophiles: How is your “bookside” manner?
“Cruelty To Books.” Author unknown. The Gazette, April 20, 1963. Part of the Osler Library’s Kelen Family fonds, it is from a 1960s scrapbook arranged in memory of Osler Librarian, W. W. Francis (1878-1959).
For those inspired by this topic, we suggest taking a look at writer and physician Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1883 posthumous “lost” novel The Narrative of John Smith, wherein the altruistic protagonist Smith lobbies for a bill to be passed by the House of Commons concerning better care and preservation of books:
“Since we have societies for the prevention of various kinds of cruelty, why do we not have a society for the prevention of cruelty to books?”
Only slightly ironic that the excerpt from The Gazette has been earmarked to highlight a couple of paragraphs?
Yes! Great comment! The fact the scrapbook creator felt compelled to earmark an article about the faux pas of earmarking is perhaps my favourite thing about this article. Happy that someone else noticed this 🙂