Friday, April 24, 2020

Stay-at-home shelfie #28



We've reached the bottom of the Fairy Tale and Folklore Bookshelf. There are some mysterious books down here. And maybe it's more fun if we just leave some of them mysterious, for future Home Library Historians™ to obsess over like those academics who spend their lives psychoanalyzing Shakespeare's sonnets.

In the first photo, we have another volume by Italo Calvino. Why isn't it next to the Calvino book one shelf up? Should that make me itchy? Then there are more folk-tale collections tied to various geographic regions. I would have sworn that I'd blogged about Sandman's Rainy Day Stories at some point, but apparently I have not. Maybe I dreamed it. This copy was once the property of Elinor F. Rogers of Melrose, Massachusetts. She graduated from Melrose High School in June 1933, on a night when Miss Margaret Chandler was the valedictorian, according to The Boston Globe. And no, I don't think that Chandler is part of my family tree, but wouldn't it just be the nuttiest thing you ever heard if she is?

Then there's a collection of recent books on folk horror, a topic that ties in a bit with psychogeography. Mix in some magic, some fairies, and some cryptozoology, and this shelf is a wonderful hot mess. A 10-year-old back in my day would have had a great time if he or she got to secretly browse a shelf like this. Dragons, Fairies and Fun, by Dora Broome, is another book that Amanda Jones of Wales introduced me to. And I was inspired to track down The Evil Eye after this 2017 post.

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