- Joanie Morgan chanced upon a library book that her late stepfather had borrowed 90 years earlier.
- She returned it to the library because she said "it was the right thing to do."
Early this fall, Joanie Morgan was on a mission to find a suitable book to lend to the 9-year-old grandson of a dear friend.
She was spoiled for choice because the library inside the family's vacation home in Hot Springs, Virginia, was packed with hundreds of titles that had been collected by various relatives.
But, Morgan told Business Insider, she found herself being drawn to a book by the renowned Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad called "Youth and Two Other Stories."
The octogenarian pulled it off the shelf and examined its spine. To her surprise, it was stamped with the words "Larchmont Public Library."
Then, when she opened the book, she saw that it had a printed slip stuck to the inside back cover. The stamp showed that the title should have been returned to the library by October 11, 1933 — almost exactly 90 years earlier.
"I was intrigued," Morgan said.
Morgan believed the forgotten library book had been absorbed into the family's collection
She immediately thought of her late stepfather, James H.S Ellis Jr, who had lived in Larchmont, NY, before meeting her mother, Kay Wheeler, in 1958.
Ellis had raised two sons in the suburban town with his first wife, Morgan said. It led her to believe that the advertising executive had checked the book out of the library on behalf of one of his boys in the early 1930s.
Morgan suspected that her stepdad, who died in 1978, had forgotten to return it. She said that, as the years passed, it had likely been absorbed into the vast collection of books at the vacation home.
Morgan said that she mailed the book back to the library
"People have asked if I did the math and figured out how much the fine might have been," Morgan told Business Insider. But, she said, she didn't give it a thought.
Instead, she said, her instinct was to "do the right thing." She called Larchmont Public Library and told a member of staff that she planned to return the book by October 11, 2023 — 90 years after it was initially due.
"I did it all up in a bulletproof package and mailed it to the library," she said.
Other 'guilty' patrons sent in their overdue books after hearing about the return
Liam Hegarty, who heads the reference section of Larchmont Public Library, opened the parcel with interest. He told Business Insider that the institution imposes a daily fine of 20 cents on past-due books.
However, he said that, on their safe return, the total amount is a straight $5. He said, "We don't want to discourage people from bringing back a book because they're afraid the fine will be immense."
To this end, Hegarty and his colleagues wrote a post about the long-awaited return of "Youth and Two Other Stories" on the library's Facebook page. The post — which pointed out that Morgan might have been dealt a $6,400 fine if the $5 maximum penalty hadn't existed — went viral.
According to the librarian, the publicity encouraged other patrons to return books that they'd been harboring, too.
One borrower mailed in a book past due from 1969. Hegarty said that the package included a check for the maximum fine of $5. He said that the guilty party — who wrote that they could keep their "dirty secret no longer" — also made a donation to the Friends of the Larchmont Library.
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