There’s some things you own that you’re particularly proud of, objects that give pleasure just from being in your possession. Usually these objects are uncommon, collectors’ items, or they hold sentimental significance, or they just say something about you. I’m considering doing a series of posts on some of my favourite possessions, but I will start with a fairly recent acquisition of mine: Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson’s A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.

This book is uncommon on account of the obscurity of its subject matter; it’s a synopsis and critical discussion of James Joyce’s final and most difficult work, Finnegans Wake. Outside of literary circles I doubt it was ever widely read and the book’s been out of print for years. My copy is from 1947, making it only slightly younger than the oldest book I own, a 1944 copy of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

I like this book on two levels: Firstly, it has a very pure bookish sort of quality. The cover is blue, the pages are slightly yellowed, though still in good condition. If it ever had a dust-jacket, that’s been long-lost somewhere down the years, leaving only its plain blue hard-cover. The front and back offer no clues to the book’s identity, the title being printed on the spine only, and there in gold lettering only distinguishable from the sun-bleached fabric by its metallic sheen. It has a charming anonymity.

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