My Library (Part the first)

oozes out all over the apartment.   I will imitate Victorian Parlor II and give you a tour of some of my Victorian Era books.   This first is the upper half of one of the bookcases, all of which are cheap sorts (although no bookcase is ever really cheap).   But these three shelves house my Victorian novels and many are just rollicking good fun to read.

I have read over half but have yet to enjoy (top shelf left side red with gold lettering) John Halifax, Gentleman.    Next to it is Sister Sue which I have read and it was just alright.
I just love the titles of many of these:   Scarlett Car/Princess Aline,  Won by Waiting,  Pleasures & Palaces (that was a good one), The Easiest Way, Only the Governess, Mistress and Maid, His Official Fiance to name a few of the top row.
   
If you want to enter the Victorian world, reading one of these old novels is, I think, the best way to do so.    This one is just pure fun:  Repented at Leisure by Bertha M. Clay. .    I read it all in one go on a weekend many years ago.

On the second shelf is a set of what were called double-deckers, two-volume novels and I have a very good one titled Marcella.   I found them separately way back when I was 17 years old.  I read it then and didn't get half of it.   I have recently reread them and gotten a LOT more out of them.  
On the third shelf far right are 2 modern printings of Victorian novels.  One I have read, East Lynne and one I have not yet The Heir of Redclyffe.
On the far left is my Marie Corelli collection.

 This is what I call my eclectic set of Dickens.  I haven't read all of these but I have read a few and of course, I've watched nearly all of them thanks to the BBC.  The big fat grey thing that read's Dickens is an EXCELLENT biography of him which I have read.
Below is my truly fine set of Henry James' which I got for $10 in a library estate sale.
To it's left are a two William Dean Howell's novels only one of which I am in the middle of reading and Zulieka Dobson by Max Beerbohm which I read long ago and enjoyed hugely.
My collection of Trollope is in this bookcase but none of them are old editions except the first of the Barchester series.

 Still in the parlor or living room (I can't help calling it that), are also my beloved set of Booth Tarkington not pictured here, and shown below is my young girls collection (on the top shelf including the four years of college of Betty Wales books which I enjoyed rereading after my hysterectomy.    Next to those four grey backs are my Louisa May Alcott volumes.
The 2nd and 3rd shelves show some of my favorite novels by an author I love, Kathleen Thompson Norris.  I've read ALL of them some many times over.  I'm still working on collecting all of them in hardback if possible.  She has been a delight in my life.

And if there was ever a disaster and I could only have a few books, one of them would be this one.   It has how to do EVERYTHING in it besides the cookbook part in the second half.   It give instructions on building an outhouse and where to place it.  

I think this nice somehow to know that this copy belonged to:
Mrs. James A. Wells, Jr.
Sept 11, 1916
600 N. Sycamore St
Kokomo - Indiana.






















And here is my Thackeray collection flanked by Hints on Household Taste & The House Beautiful and my Sinclair Lewis volumes (the ones I have read and liked).
Last are some of my poetry collection, the Victorian authors:

In part II I will go through the other rooms that have books.