Do You Write Your Name In Books?

Dear friend,

My mother, lighting up a cigarette and warning us, her children, of the evils of smoking would always say, “Do as I say and not as I do.” I say that to you now, though not about smoking, and what I really intend is, “Do as I say and not as I don’t.”

What I don’t do, and have never done — not that I recollect — is inscribe books I own with my name. Nor have I ever applied to the inner cover one of those decorative ex libris bookplates.

I would no more append my name to my books than I would to the tins of sardines I keep around in case of earthquakes. It’s not an aversion, just an absence of caring. It’s also perverse because, as far as I’m concerned — and here I’m talking about books bought secondhand — the presence of a name in a book is value added, an enhancement; not an author signature, which is a separate consideration, but an owner signature.

These remnants I see as invitations, as challenges, as opportunities for research.

I have spent hours, days, weeks, opening every available portal, peeking through digital keyholes, trying to fill in the blanks about the first readers of these books, people whose circumstances changed or whose lives ended and whose property was dispersed and to whom I am linked, however tenuously, by dumb dint of acquisition.

Josephine Throne and Rosemary Bridgman never met, but, somehow, in different places and at different times, I was moved to buy books that once were theirs, books they bought as very young women, and signed and dated, one in London, and one in Paris, within a few days of each other in 1947.

I have looked under the rocks of their reasons, dusted off their particulars, been in touch with members of their families, and while neither was famous in a global sense, they both led extremely involved and accomplished lives.

I feel — unreasonably, it must be said — that I am, in a minor way, one of the guardians of their legacies.

Margaret E. Hawley was living at 527 E. 15th St. SE in Portland, Oregon, when she bought (or was given) Cookery, Its Art and Practice by the English physician and polymath J. L. W. Thudichum.

Margaret, who made her living demonstrating new-to-the-market electric ranges in department stores, was the youngest daughter of a family of Oregon settlers, descendants of English seafarers and forgers transported to Australia, and she’s part of a family saga that is vast in its scope.

I feel, too, a deep affinity for Montreal-born (1917) and London-bred Angela Michalson, who once owned what is now my copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass — it was given to her as a gift in March of 1938, in London, to mark, as I intuit, her 21st birthday.

Angela also came from a remarkable family about whose dramas and tragedies I’ve learned, via the public record, more than I can discreetly say. She was over 100 when she died, not long ago — she had not been a Michalson for a long time.

Also a centenarian, and also from Montreal — via Winnipeg and Vancouver — was Edythe Vineberg, who owned my copy of Partner in Three Worlds, for which Dorothy Duncan won the Governor General’s Award, non-fiction, in 1945. Duncan, the wife of Hugh MacLennan, is not now well remembered, but I would recommend that anyone search out her diary, excerpts of which are available online, and which is a very revealing portrait of that hubby-as-baby marriage.

Also available online is her first book, a cheerful “how-to” called You Can Live in an Apartment, which I also recommend.

I learned of Duncan while I was researching Mavis Gallant’s early journalism; she produced a photo essay about Dorothy and Hugh and their summer life in the country outside Montreal. That research brought me into contact with a writer in Victoria (I’ll allow her her privacy) who told me she had acquired a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses which had once belonged — her signature is on the inside cover — to Gallant. (This was a totemic book for Gallant who marked every Bloomsday by calling friends in Canada and reading aloud her favourite passages.)

Now, I happen to own a copy of Gallant’s 1964 collection, My Heart is Broken, and it was once the property of Mary Meade Harnett. She had distinguished herself at Vassar, won several essay contests, and went on to have a career in publishing — she had her own imprint for a while. That title, My Heart is Broken, is biographically apt because, as research reveals, Mary Meade was about to embark on a short and miserable marriage about which she never spoke when she signed the book in Chicago on May 7, 1964.

Many are the connections, it’s a world wide web, and all you need to do to plug in is pay attention and, of course, it would help if you were to sign your books. Date them, too. Maybe add a place name.

You may well be giving some nerd unknown, perhaps unborn, the joy of future discovery. Of course, you might also be giving up your secrets.

But, also, all going well, by the time that happens you’ll have passed into a place beyond caring, so would that be so bad?

Is the surrendering of secrets too high a price to pay for a toehold in posterity? Me, I crave oblivion, so I’ll stay my inscribing hand while remaining grateful to the small club of dead readers whose signed books have fallen to me and whose stories — and some secrets — I’ve also acquired.

To whoever might read this, I wish you health and prosperity and peace. I wish you happy reading in 2026 and in however many years are yet to come.

Bill Richardson, Vancouver.

This piece was commissioned by Upstart & Crow Literary Arts Studio as part of its holiday programming.