Loves Garland: or Posies for Rings, Hand-kerchers, & Gloves

They say every book tells a story, and this one does not disappoint. Loves Garland, or Posies for Rings…contains a selection of posies, or love poems, that could be inscribed onto gold rings and given to a friend or lover as a testament of one’s affection. This edition of Loves Garland, published in 1883, is a reprint of a 1674 edition, which in turn is a reprint of the original 1624 edition. However, our copy of Loves Garland tells the story of a different kind of love: a love of books. Loves Garland was one of series of opuscula, or small works, published by a London group of pithy bibliophiles named the Sette of Odd Volumes. Odd Volumes member and volume editor James Roberts Brown inscribed this copy to fellow London book-lover Wynne Edwin Baxter in 1885. Baxter also happened to be the coroner for the Jack-the-Ripper victims and for Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man. After Baxter’s death, this book ended up in the library of Dr. Benjamin S. Abeshouse, a Yale-schooled urologist whose unpublished manuscript “Troubled Waters” was about the genitourinary diseases of famous men. Posthumously, “Troubled Waters” became a series of modern-day opuscula published by the pharmaceutical company Easton Laboratories between 1964 and 1971. The series, titled A Medical History of [Henry VII, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, etc.], was not Dr. Abeshouse’s only legacy. He and his wife, Carolyn Abeshouse, compiled what is believed to be the largest collection of epitaphs in the world—over 7,500. Since 1968, that compilation has been stewarded by the Smithsonian Libraries.