Ready for September? We are, with a new crocodile mystery for you to take a stab at!
What’s going on with this book? Why does some of the text on the cover appear to be faded?
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Because the book (Modest Tchaikovsky’s translation of the Sonnets) has a printed glassine wrapper.
Simon Beattie — August 30, 2016
Is it perhaps embossed, some kind of early braille?
Steven Van Impe — August 30, 2016
The original page has possibly been overlaid with the kind of tissue that restorers used fifty years ago? The obscured title includes the word “sonnete”, which is possibly Latin or Italian, though an unusual form. Maybe this is an edition of the sonnets in a language other than English? And the name in red, M. Chaikovsky, is another puzzle.
William Ingram — August 30, 2016
Maybe a watermark?
Jan Kellett — August 30, 2016
This book is covered under “glassine”. Modest Chaĭkovskiĭ is the name of the translator, printed on the glassine cover. A very detailed description of this book — published in Moscow, 1914 — can be read in hamnet : http://hamnet.folger.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=339218.
elisabeth bruxer — August 30, 2016