Librarians at the Westwood and Price Hill branches of the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library got quite a surprise late last year. A copy of "Wild West" by Bertrand W. Sinclair was returned after 98 years.
"I've been here a while, and I've seen books come back that were due in the '80s and the '90s and even the '70s, but this is the first time I've come across a book that was almost a century overdue," Christopher Smith, genealogy and research services reference librarian, tells WVXU.
According to the date slip in the back of the book, it was checked out from the Price Hill branch sometime in 1926 and due back on Nov. 23, 1926.
It was never returned, until now.
The book was discovered by family members cleaning out the home of an elderly loved one who had died. It was found on a bookshelf with other books, though Smith says it's unclear to whom the book belonged.
"We assume it's the person who checked it out, but we don't know that," he says, noting the library does have some old records, but it would take a lot of digging to see if it still has lending records going back that far.
It's also unlikely the person who checked it out would have only died recently.
It was returned to the Westwood branch about five miles away — and more than 35,000 days late. The library no longer charges fines, but it if did, he calculates the fine would have been roughly $730. The average cost of a hardback novel in 1926, he points out, was $2.
"The way I look at it is someone either loved this book — and I think they did — or they just forgot about it," says Smith. "I assume this person just loved the book and decided, 'Nope, I'm going to keep that.' "
After about two years, he notes, the library likely — though he can't say for certain — sent someone out to look for the book. He says library policy at the time would have been to go after the borrower, so their borrowing privileges would also likely have been affected.
"It's really hard to say. That's what I mean when I say there's more mystery behind it than there is stuff that I could actually state."
Either way, the book was clearly well cared for, despite its age. Smith reports it is in decent shape. The library did purchase another copy of the book two or three years after the original went missing, and it remains in circulation.
Now, it has a friend.
"Normally, for a book this old that's fiction, we wouldn't necessarily keep a second copy," he tells WVXU. "But in this case, I felt it deserved a place on the shelf, so I had it re-cataloged — because it had fallen out of our system decades and decades ago — and it's back on the shelf and can be checked out."
Could it have been picked up at a used book sale?
A lot of times, library books head to a used book sale or the Friends of the Public Library after they reach their useful lifetime in circulation. Smith says it's clear this wasn't a case of someone picking the book up used.
"[There] would have been a stamp that clearly said 'discarded material,' and those are clearly visible," he notes. "But there is nothing in this book to indicate that it was not meant to come back, and there's nothing in the book to indicate that the library got rid of it."
There is a stamp indicating the book was added to the library's collection on May 14, 1926.
"I just found it fascinating. The fact that it came back in decent shape, considering it's an almost a 100-year-old book — that's crazy," Smith says. "The fact that it made it back to us, and didn't just make it into the garbage or recycling or getting ground up for paper pulp? It's just amazing that a book like that made it back to us."
What's the book about, anyway?
As the name suggests, "Wild West" is a Western-genre work of fiction. Smith notes it was very popular, and Westerns were a big deal at the time.
"It was the books that would lead into the TV programs that were all the rage in the 1950s," he adds.
Here's the liner description from the library's catalog:
Rustlers had long been stealing from Montana cattle outfits when Robin Tyler, rep for the Bar M during the Block S roundup, saw Mark Steele, the Block S ramrod, hazing cows into a hidden canyon, and learned that Steele was the secret owner of the T Bar S iron, whose cows showed a miraculous increase each year. Trying to catch Steele red-handed, Robin tipped his hand. And Steele, a gunman, trapped Robin, who had never owned a gun, in a line cabin and decided to kill him. Robin pulled through that ruckus and went on the dodge. But he came back-this time with a smoking Colt-to start a wholesale cleanup on the Montana rangeland!