If the library system in the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario, handed out fines for overdue books, the one for a recently returned tome titled “The Excellent Woman” would be a whopper.
The Victorian-era guidebook for ambitious Christian women by a British writer named Anne Pratt appears to have been checked out about 135 years ago from the Hamilton Public Library, a spokesperson for the library said.
And the suspected scofflaw, a “Miss Charlotte Morgan” of Central School in Hamilton, incriminated herself by writing her name on a back page.
“We know she was a teacher at the school in the 1890s, and we know she died in 1942,” Robert Moore, a history teacher who found the book in his late father’s house and returned it to the library last week, told NBC News. “The mystery now is when exactly in the 1890s she checked the book out and how it wound up behind the grate at the school where my father found it 50 years ago.”
As for the book, it appears to be one of the first volumes that appeared on the shelves when the library opened its doors in September 1890, Moore said. “Inside it is listed as book No. 54, written by hand in ink,” he said.
Shelley McKay, a spokesperson for the library, said, “This might be one of the original books from the original Hamilton library.”
McKay said this edition was published in 1852 in Boston, five years after it made its debut in England.
“It’s in good shape,” she said. “I should look so good at its age.”
Moore said his father, Tom, was a “stationary engineer” at what was then called the Central Public School. He said his dad was doing some renovations on the heating system when he stumbled across the book and brought it home.
“I remember him showing it to us, and I remember reading it,” Moore said. “It had all these beautiful illustrations and very flowery Victorian language. “
Moore said that it sat on a bookshelf until his father died this year and that he came across it when he was cleaning out the house.
“I said to myself, ‘This has got to go back to the library,’” he said.
It was welcomed back with open arms, McKay said.
“He brought it to our Sherwood branch, and we were more than a little surprised and taken aback by the discovery,” she said.
Asked whether she had had a chance to peruse the book, McKay said she had.
“I would say it’s of its time,” she said. “But it’s really a beautiful book. The illustrations are gorgeous.”
While Pratt wrote the book, her name does not appear on the title page on this edition. Instead, the name of the author of the introduction, a Protestant clergyman named William B. Sprague, is prominently displayed.
“I think that’s because Sprague was well-known at the time,” Moore said. “He had his sermons published. And there was still a stigma against books by women writers.”
Pratt’s book is essentially a commentary on the Bible’s Book of Proverbs, which discusses — and offers tips on — how women should behave.
Moore said the book, for its time, was “very empowering for women,” although it might not go over well with “hard-core feminists” today.
“Anne Pratt was very critical of vapid women in England who just aimed to marry well and go to parties,” Moore said. “She was encouraging women to do more with their lives, to be in a partnership with their husbands and not just submit to their husbands.”
McKay said that the recovery of Pratt’s book has generated great excitement in Hamilton and that she has gotten numerous calls from people who want to see it.
“We hope this will encourage people to look under their beds in their closets and return those old library materials,” McKay said.
But there are no plans to put Pratt’s book back out into circulation.
“This is heading to the archives,” she said.
