Tiny Burns

This tiny copy of Burns' poetry came through the post the other day, a present from a friend who saw it in a second hand bookshop and thought of me. She regretted the loss of the title page, and with it the date of publication, but felt sure it was Victorian. However, pencilled on the first page as it stands now, there is the date 3/10/2. I incline to think that this indicates at least the date at which it came into someone's possession, and that the someone was not the first owner. I also feel that nowadays we write the first 9 years of the current century "02" rather than "2", presumably because of all the computer-readable forms we have to fill in.

I've included the disposable lighter for an idea of the scale of this tiny book. The lighter, interestingly, belonged to a Russian musician and was left here after their last performance in Dunoon.