Here's a brief thread about annotations in a book. This is one of my favourite #books on #frogs, Chris Mattison's 1987 Frogs and Toads of the World, one of the first of the Blandford Press animals of the world series...
My copy was purchased from the used book section of Gilbert's, a noted book seller/dealer in Southampton, today long since closed...
Whoever owned this book before me was properly interested in frogs, and was clearly collecting literature on them. We know this because they heavily annotated the book's bibliography. Look...
Their annotations show that they were aiming to obtain all the classic textbooks on #amphibians, as well as classic monographs, including those on Australasian and tropical American frog groups...
This, then, wasn't a casual interest. They seemed pretty serious. If you're aiming to track down Poynton 1964 on southern African amphibians, say.. (or _have_ obtained it)... you're in deep, you're not messing around...
I've often wondered who this person was. Were they a herpetologist? Fast forward to more recent years, and I was again in a bookshop in Southampton. I found another Chris Mattison Blandford book, the (also very good) Snakes of the World. I already own a copy, so didn't buy it...
I engaged in conversation with the woman at the till, who was interested in the natural history books I was buying. Her son-in-law, who lived in Southampton, was a herpetologist. Oh, interesting, said I. What was his name? ....
Chris Mattison.
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