Adeel Hassan, The New York Times; Book Surfaces 120 Years After a San Francisco Library Lost Almost Everything;
"Randall Tarpey-Schwed, a book collector and library member, found the book on a website that deals in, among other things, rare books and collectibles. How it reached that previous owner is unknown.
Mr. Tarpey-Schwed said he was curious whether any books had survived the 1906 earthquake and fires, by virtue of having been checked out.
“There was no place to return the book, at least for a while, or to reapply Gertrude Stein’s famous quote, there was no ‘there there’ to return the book to,” he said.
“The book is not worth much monetarily,” Mr. Tarpey-Schwed said. “It is, after all, a soot-stained book with a lot of old library stamps. But as a survivor, it is priceless, and I knew immediately I wanted to return it to the library.”
The book’s author, Bret Harte, might have been a library member, Mr. Cooper said. Many writers and artists have been members, he said, but full membership records from before the earthquake are gone."
