Pound probably acquired the work in 1905, and annotated the text with numerous notes and translations.  In a letter written to Iris Barry, circa 1916, Pound wrote, “Spain has one good modern novelist, Galdós.”

*2009-181.  Purchased with the P.D. Howe fund.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.  Image may not be reproduced without permission.

This sensational case was, according to The Times, “the subject of general conversation throughout the country of Lancaster for several months… We do not remember any former occasion when the public curiosity was more excited.”

The plaintiff summarized the situation thus: “The declaration states, that in consideration that the plaintiff promise to marry the defendent, he, the defendent, undertook to marry the plaintiff; but that instead of doing so, he had married another woman.  The plaintiff pleads the general issue.”  The defense argued that the defendant was truly “the meanest reptile on earth” but concluded that Miss Orford had not lost much in losing her fiance to another woman.  The jury ruled on the side of Miss Orford, who was awarded a £7,000 settlement.

Aside from being an intriguing example of proto-feminism, the book has an equally intriguing association.  It belonged to book collector Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785-1861), one of the first famous female book collectors in Europe.  Currer added several pages of her own manuscript notes to the book, agreeing with the defense that, “no one can think that Miss Orford sustained any loss of happiness, by her loss of Mr. Cole.”  Currer also lists several similar cases between Mr. Cole and other local women, one of whom claimed Cole attempted to leave her at the church door, ” ‘No, no Mr. Cole, as we have got so far we will go on’, or words to that effect…As might be expected after living a short time together most unhappily, she left him…”

*2009-109.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Poet, dramatist, Harvard graduate and Nobel Prize winner T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) began to study Latin while a student at Smith Academy from 1898-1905, and continued to study languages, both modern and ancient, through college.  Eliot probably acquired J.W. Mackail’s Latin Literature while studying at Harvard.  While he made few annotations to the text itself, Eliot also made extensive notes in pencil on several blank pages throughout the book.  Eliot’s bookplate is also pasted inside the front cover (Eliot’s bookplate includes his family’s motto Tace et fac, “be silent and act.”)  Examples of Eliot’s early handwriting are uncommon, and as Eliot made extensive use of his linguistic skills within his poetry, it is always interesting to catch a glimpse into his study of them. (Click on the images to magnify them.)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of the most important figures in the Beat movement of the mid-twentieth century.  Two years after graduation from Columbia University, while working in New York as a market researcher, Ginsberg purchased this 1936 edition of Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-1935, which he signed “Allen Ginsberg / October 1950″ on the front free endpaper.  Ginsberg’s extensive annotations to The Waste Land document his efforts to work through the poem.

Mackail, Latin Literature. New York: Scribners, 1895.  *2008-1002.

Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909-1935. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. [1936]  *AC95.G4351.Zz936e.

Houghton Library, Harvard University.  Images may not be reproduced without permission.