CHENNAI : The pages of the book laid out on a long table at the Madras Literary Society are old and brown, with torn edges and holes in them. The collection, which was displayed on Saturday as a part of Madras Week celebrations, featured rare, first-edition Western and Indian books from the 17th and
18th centuries from the library’s archives. Among the books displayed was Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which dates to 1726 and is considered to be one of the most important works in the history of Science.
The book, which details Newton’s laws of motion, is written entirely in Latin, much like Aristotle’s Aristotlis Opera Omnia, written in 1619, which is also preserved in the library.An excerpt from a journal entry by William Hillhouse, a member of the Royal Geographical Society, reads, “The Indians always eat the moment they wake up. In the morning at six, our coffee was made, and the pepper-pot, in large tin kettles, was warmed, the wives of our captain and pilot taking the cooking department. The Indians, provided they eat early, do not require a regular meal till evening.” The preserved book, simply titled Royal Geographical Society, was published in 1834.
Many books do not have the index pages and thus are difficult to identify. The books have been preserved through a grant provided to the MLS by the Delhi Culture Department, or through the library’s ‘Adopt A Book’ initiative that was started in 2015. Individuals who wish to adopt a book will pay for the restoration and preservation of the book, and will in turn have their names printed on the first page. “We have around 10,000 of these books that need to be restored. Many of them are gazettes, diaries, maps, botany books, and more. These books were unusable, but now they are valuable for research. The Library, with the funds it receives, preserves the book to the best of what current technology can offer,” said Uma Maheswari, the librarian.
The restoration process is a long and elaborate one. The book is first dusted, and then placed in a fumigation box — a cupboard-shaped device with a drawer that sprays chemicals on the 10 books that can be fit there at a time for 24 hours to ensure that all insects are killed. Each page is them individually cleaned by wiping down each side on an acid sheet with a cotton ball. Two people then pull a butterpaper-like sheet onto both sides of each page and the edges are sealed. The book is then leather bound.
This process is expensive and time consuming, yet Uma and the team of dedicated volunteers at MLS have taken up this challenge for the preservation of literary works. Members and non-members can adopt a book for its preservation, and the cost varies depending on the size of the book.