Sydney<\/a>, by a man who had found it inside a tea crate bricked into a sealed fireplace<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve never had anything that old come back to us,\u201d library manager Michelle Hudson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI follow lots of libraries on social media and often you\u2019ll get things that are maybe 30 or 40 years old when they\u2019re cleaning out estates and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s finder did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The late return fine would be around A$28,000 (US$19,500), allowing for inflation, Hudson said. That was calculated on the British three pence a week overdue fee that was printed on the inside cover of the book, along with a list of rules that applied when the library opened in 1872.<\/p>\n
The book was marked as No 506 in the library\u2019s original collection of about 1,000 books. Photograph: Catherine Taylor\/AP<\/p>\n
But Hudson said there was no way of tracing the final borrower who had accrued the debt. The library journal from the 1870s that recorded who borrowed a book and when had been lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, we have a missing link. There\u2019s nothing in the book that tells us who the last borrower was,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n
Library rules in the 1870s stated that a book had to be returned and an overdue debt paid before another book could be borrowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe that\u2019s why they never returned it to us,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n
Under the antiquated rules of the day, up to three books could be borrowed by households in which at least six members were \u201cknown to be able to read\u201d.<\/p>\n
The book, which has some water damage from its years under a chimney, was marked as No 506 in the library\u2019s original collection of around 1,000 books, Hudson said.<\/p>\n
She expects the book was lost within a few years of the library opening.<\/p>\n
The returned book will be displayed in the library\u2019s local history collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to allow it to go back out again. We don\u2019t want to wait another 150 years for this book to be returned,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian public library has had a book returned an estimated 150 years late after being found behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-833365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}