NOT the law-bomb lobbing Bob Loblaw Law Blog. (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} rjhatl) wrote,@ 2008-04-22 10:03:00 |
|
Book stalking
Last week I bought a group of Nigeria-related fiction and nonfiction books that were sold as a lot. They were all from the 1950s-1960s. The price was reasonable, and when the box came yesterday I was very pleased. Almost all of the books had the owner's name, the date they acquired the book, and (I assume) the city they bought it in written inside the front cover.
The name in most of the books was "Robert LeRoy West", and it looks like he got almost all of his books in either Ibadan, Nigeria or London. There's one book that has "Dee West" inside the cover, and it was bought in Maryland in the '70s. One book has a Sabena boarding pass for "Mr. West" on a flight from Leopoldville (Kinshasa) to Matadi in 1959. The pass sleeve has large ads for Martini beverages and Philips Electronics in Congo (complete with pre-Zaireification city names like Leopoldville, Elisabethville, and Stanleyville).
Thanks to Google, I now know who he was. According to another obituary, he "virtually ran the Congolese economy in 1960". I can only assume that his wife died recently, and the family is clearing out his inventory of books. Very interesting guy- I'm browsing through some of his journal articles on Jstor now.
There's another, smaller, lot of some of his Congo books on Ebay now, but the price is a little unreasonable (IMO) and they're almost all in French. I also suspect that that these are his Nigerian art and poetry books, but I'm less interested in them (and again, the price is less reasonable- $20 more than I paid for my box).
Underachiever moment of the day: just doing some quick calculations, if he died in 1991, that would make him 34 in 1960. So, when he was my age, he was running the Congolese economy.
Last week I bought a group of Nigeria-related fiction and nonfiction books that were sold as a lot. They were all from the 1950s-1960s. The price was reasonable, and when the box came yesterday I was very pleased. Almost all of the books had the owner's name, the date they acquired the book, and (I assume) the city they bought it in written inside the front cover.
The name in most of the books was "Robert LeRoy West", and it looks like he got almost all of his books in either Ibadan, Nigeria or London. There's one book that has "Dee West" inside the cover, and it was bought in Maryland in the '70s. One book has a Sabena boarding pass for "Mr. West" on a flight from Leopoldville (Kinshasa) to Matadi in 1959. The pass sleeve has large ads for Martini beverages and Philips Electronics in Congo (complete with pre-Zaireification city names like Leopoldville, Elisabethville, and Stanleyville).
Thanks to Google, I now know who he was. According to another obituary, he "virtually ran the Congolese economy in 1960". I can only assume that his wife died recently, and the family is clearing out his inventory of books. Very interesting guy- I'm browsing through some of his journal articles on Jstor now.
There's another, smaller, lot of some of his Congo books on Ebay now, but the price is a little unreasonable (IMO) and they're almost all in French. I also suspect that that these are his Nigerian art and poetry books, but I'm less interested in them (and again, the price is less reasonable- $20 more than I paid for my box).
Underachiever moment of the day: just doing some quick calculations, if he died in 1991, that would make him 34 in 1960. So, when he was my age, he was running the Congolese economy.
