Any ideas who’s signature this is?

Hi

I have an old copy of The Money Game by Norman Angell. It has a signature in the front I’ve never been able to figure who’s it is. It looks like an autograph. Any ideas?

Thanks


Claire

 

Given where it is and the lack of any other words, I'd say just the signature of someone who owned the book at one time.

Last name Peters, initials could be JR, FR or TR.

 

I see "L.R. Peters."

Debora

 

Thanks for the suggestions, i’d seen f r and a r Peters, so handy to have a few more combinations to google thanks. I’d have thought if someone was just putting their name in it as they owned it, they would have just written their name than signed it. Plenty of autographs have no other words, some signer’s commonly don’t, if someone does a load en-masse.

 

I get your point about autographs in general, but I would wonder why someone named Peters would autograph a book he or she did not write?

 

Yes course I’d already thought of that too, yes I already wondered that. I know it might just be that. Its 50/50 either that or an autograph.

It’s people being so quick to dismiss things that cause things to go many years undiscovered....

 

It may not be considered an autograph - just the book owner. I have lots of books I picked up at yard sales and the Library book sales that have owners names in them.

 

I'm in for FR Peters, owner. Have frequently seen owners' names, in script, written on the fly leaf of books. Once people learned cursive writing, they did not tend to print, particularly not their own name. People also used to sometimes write their location, such as New York, N.Y., under their name, also in cursive.

Authors, when signing only their name or a very short 'To so & so' + signature, tend to put it on the title page, near their name there. They use the flyleaf mainly if they want to write something longer, as Angell did here:



You seem to be equating 'signature' with 'autograph' & restricting 'autograph' to the signature of the author. Signing a book & putting your name in it can also be the same thing. I have spent, & no doubt will continue to spend, my fair share of time researching something in the hope that the item is more valuable than it turns out to be, so have at it.

 

I'll guess F. R. Peters, as long as we're guessing.

Also agree that it's likely to be an owner of the book who signed his/her name to it.

What do you know of the provenance of the book? Often we don't know anything of the provenance of random books in our collections, but sometimes there are clues that can help in identifying previous owners.