I have a fairly small collection of books from the late 1800's and always wanting to add on to this collection, off to eBay I went! I love the smell of old books, the history of them, who owned them before, etc. I especially love antique poetry books and ended up buying these 3. I won't spend more than $20 for a book for my collection so all of these were under that price. The most I spent on a book recently is $50 but that was a gift for my dad, but more on that later...

The first book I picked up was The Poetical Works of Lord Byron. What started me on this whole book buying spree was I read an article a month or so ago about Lord Byron and then a few days later on an episode of Antiques Roadshow someone brought in a wine cabinet that belonged to Lord Byron so the name came up again. The following morning I looked up some of his work and printed it out to read on the train but then decided I wanted to do a search on eBay for antique poetry books. Well wouldn't ya know it but the 3rd listing down was for that Lord Byron book.

The 2nd book, The Dramatic Works Of Edward Bulwer Lytton was a whim purchase, it was only $4.50 so I thought why not. Lord Lytton is considered a bad writer today, but was quite popular when he was alive. He was the one who coined the phrases "It was a dark and stormy night", "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar". I figured it would be interesting to read more of his work since some of his quotations are so popular and well heard of today.

Finally the 3rd book I purchased is Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. It has a ton of works from various poets including Francis Bacon, Robert Burns, Coleridges, John Dreyden, Goldsmith, Keats, Nash, Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth, and many more. The reason I bought this is so many poets are included so I have a ton of material to read plus this book as well as the first book I purchased are from the same publisher and from the same series of books they put out in the 1880s, The Crowell's Red Line Poets series. So they have really beautifully designed covers and gilded edges.

I would of had 3 more books to write about but unfortunately I lost the bid on eBay to only 50¢! I was devastated because all 3 were only going to cost me $20.00, two of which were from the Red Line Poets series. I watched the auction for 2 hours and in the last minute I put my bid in and in the last couple seconds I was outbid. I should of waited till the last 20 seconds to put the bid in to guarantee the win but I didn't.. I'm still not over it.. LOL