Endpapers

Mid-20th century endpapers, their colors shielded from light inside the covers of these much-handled books, and so preserved.

Source here

Manners Can Be Fun

 

 

I was a child at the time children were indoctrinated with material like this, but my family was not middle-class enough for such refinements, so I was not directly exposed to them. That probably makes these documented examples of old-time admonitions, values and expectations about correct deportment seem both more charming and more sinister to my eyes now. 

Sources here and elsewhere

Endpapers

Endpapers of discarded library books. The ones above are probably luckier than average. since they have received sympathetic retirement housing here.

At bottom, a copy of one of the justly famous collaborations between Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak. I have never seen this one in real life, but would very much like to, I'll Be You And You Be Me.

Ribbons & Bookplates

Two volumes from a six-volume set of Polybius translated from Greek into French and published in 1727. The green place markers have stayed fresh inside the their respective volumes for the past 282 years and will most likely be equally bright after another 282. For now, they make up part of the collection at the library where I work in San Francisco, but they have had many homes and many owners, as seen from the bookplates below.

Endpapers II

And my final example is not an endpaper. It is here only because the marbled paper used on this pair of bindings is too appealing to omit.

Endpapers

Endpapers tend to stay fresh and vivid because they are protected from light as they sit on the shelf decade after decade inside a closed book. The brighter colors and splashier patterns shown here are from the 18th century. The tighter patterns and more sombre colors are from the 19th century.