Friday 8 May 2009

About really old books and other funny stuff in Nothing Hill...

It is indeed kind of weird...the older i get the more interesting all old stuff becomes to me:) Lately I started to be fascinated by old books with yellow pages, printed some 50 years ago or even a century. Thats why i was really excited when, while walking on the really busy Portobello Road Market, I found on sale a box of old looking books for 15 Pounds each (or even better 2 for 25, yeahhh!).


The first one I opened was "British poems" from ....1833. Next one was even older: it was from 1799...Wow, the book I was holding was more than 200 years old!!! Now thats something impressive (it was like finding a treasure on a lonely island, but still being bit squeezed in the crowd, hihi)...After some grubbing around at two different stands for all possible old stuff I found one book that looked really appealing to me: "The Heaths Picturesque annual, Travelling sketches in France, Belgium and Holland". The book was published in 1833, look really well preserved, but the price came a bit shocking. "90 Pounds, this book has 26 beautiful engravings" said the Italian salesman....Ok, price went down till 80 after 3 minutes, but still quite over the average of 15 next 2 tables...So i noted (secretly) the name and did some google search a day later at home. To find an earlier book from the same writer (from 1822) about another region of Europe in a PDF format online!
So lucky me, I am enjoying now a lovey travel read (printed on normal paper), almost 200 years old about the adventure travelling in the North of Italy, the Tyrol and on the Rhine...

At the end of the Portobello Road i could not oversee the store with oldfashioned signs...In case u have not laughed today, read the ones below...The one about "...I can please only one person a day" kind of makes my day and do put a smile on my face...

2 comments:

WebbieLady said...

I love the one which says about cooking with wine... and sometimes she puts it on food! Hahah!

By the way, that's really antique! But for Lbs90? That's really so much!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful shots of old books!
I like the one on top. It's so lovely close up. It makes me feel like I'm right in front of these books. And of course I'm tempted to pick them up one by one to see the inside.