"Vere Foster's Copy Books: Lettering, Plain And Ornamental" (published by Blackie & Son Limited, London and Glasgow, year unknown)

 

An interesting calligraphy manual from a long time ago - when people took writing and type seriously... The book offers practical hints and technical information on how to produce fancy lettering while providing lined pages for the user to practise copying it. As you can see on the third image, someone's had a pretty good go at it!

"A Greek Literature Anthology - 1961" (Athens,1961)

I inherited this book from an uncle many years ago. He was running a kiosk selling newspapers and magazines for decades (from the 1930s to the 1980s) and collected thousands of books, periodicals etc of that period which (luckily) was passed on to me after his death!

I am really fond of this book because of the texture of the paper, the beautiful graphics for the titles and typefaces (you can see and feel the letterpress embossed on the pages) as well as the illustrations and stories. Here's only a small taste of what is inside the book. Every page spread is different than the one before - it somehow conveys the short-lived optimism of the early sixties in Greece, the romance about its past, and the blissful ignorance of what was about to happen by the end of that decade...