Day 5 - Grandma Sarah's Jane Eyre - 21 Day Family Connections Experiment

It's Day 5 of my 21 Day Family Connections Experiment.

Yesterday I was talking a bit about people's collections. There's no doubt looking around home that I collect books! But a few of those are now a 'family collection' - books that belonged to me, my mum and dad, and my grandparents. And some gifted to me by other relatives. Many of these are now shelved together. 

This book belonged to my paternal grandmother, Sarah Frances Saggers. She emigrated to Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1907 from England, bringing with her, as I understand it, just a trunk full of belongings, including this and other books. I wrote about another of her books a while ago, Perlycross, A Tale of the Western Hills. 

That book was no favourite of mine, but this one certainly was. However, I read Jane Eyre by Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronté) first in a library copy. This one which is what I would call a 'careful reading copy' (loose pages and binding), was not one my parents let me handle even though I was always careful with books. Mum had her own, more modern, copy as did I later. 

And the books we had probably meant more to my grandmother than others, as she kept them, even though I know from my mum that before she died, grandma got rid of a lot of books, including children's books. All these years, I've looked inside older books like these for sale, but have never seen her name (or my dad's) except at home. There might have been books inscribed to my dad's little brother too. 

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronté). New Edition, London, George Routledge And Sons, Limited. Broadway, Ludgate Hill, Manchester and New York. N.D. 

This book doesn't have a publication date, but I'd guess 1900? And I'm pretty sure grandma got it second hand. She has written her name inside, and underlined it emphatically, but not added her address as she did with a couple of other books. (That allowed me to figure out where she'd been working in London, England before coming to Canada.)

It's always meant a lot to me that other family loved books too. I don't know that I could pick out just a trunkful to keep, but I'm sure this would be one of them. 

For more about the 21 Day Family Connections Experiment, see my first Experiment article here.