Seasonal Reading

Looking around today for something festive to blip, I pulled out a seasonal volume of stories by Charles Dickens. The pages are brown and fragile, but that's to be expected of a book that was given to my maternal grandmother in 1900, when she was ten years old, for being the best reader in the one-room school one mile west of her home on a Virginia farm known as "Battlemont." 

That's her handwriting as an elderly woman on the title page that I blipped today. Interestingly, inside the back cover of the book, in quite different handwriting -- hand printing, to be specific -- there's an inscription that says "Awarded to E. St. Clair -- best reader. Apl. 1898." That would mean that she was just a month shy of her eighth birthday when she was given this book.

Memie, as she was known to her 14 grandchildren, was indeed a fine reader if she was relishing these works by Charles Dickens at such a tender age. You can see the first page of this volume of "Christmas Stories" in the extras, as well as the faded glory of the cover.

When I was a child, Memie always sent our family a large tin of homemade candies. I have her recipes, but can't bring myself to replicate those sugar-laden goodies...
 
Merry Christmas and Solstice Blessings to my Blipfoto friends!

[Added Christmas morning -- Many thanks to the more careful readers than yours truly, who pointed out that "best speller," as seen here, is not the same as "best reader," the note written in the back of the book in very different handwriting! My grandmother added this inscription many years later, and included her married name -- Werth -- as well. She was indeed both a fine speller and a fine reader!)

Blip 1899