So, I love Guillermo Del Toro. This will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, especially my wife who has to constantly listen to me going on and on and on about him and his films.
Recently I picked up the gorgeous Trilogía De Guillermo Del Toro Blu-Ray Criterion collection which includes a great conversation between the great man and German writer Cornielia Funke about fairy tales. In it, Del Toro mentions a book he referenced while making Pan’s Labyrinth – The Science of Fairy Tales by Edwin Sidney Hartland. It sounded right up my alley so I headed to eBay to find a copy, eventually buying one from a dealer right here in Bristol.
When it arrived it was everything I wanted it to be…
It’s such a lovely artefact. I love how old and well read it is, and how the spine has been sun-bleached from sitting on book-shelves…
And then I opened it up.
Wow. What a time capsule…
This wonderful bookplate tells me that it originally belonged the Bordighera International Library, all the way in Italy….
And then later it belonged to a F.M. Patchett who gifted it to an unknown reader in 1953….
I love the history of this little book with its frayed spine and its yellowed pages. I’m proud to add my own name to that page. I’m also tempted to try to find out who F.M.P actually was and where they lived.
Either way I’m going to treasure this for a long time.
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