My wife and youngest daughter went to an estate sale and came home with a small stack of old hardcover books. One was published in 1894 with an inscription stating it was a Christmas gift in 1912.
Another of the books is called, “The Patriot” by A.E. and H.C. Walter. After a lot of googling I found no information at all about this book or its authors. Nothing on Wikipedia, the only hit was someone selling on Amazon.
THE PATRIOT. By Avexia E. and H. C. WALTER. Dutton. 1928. $2. The masked unknown who killed Morn- ington, London profligate, war-profiteer and traitor to his country, accomplished a worthy deed, but an insufficiently important one to justify the nearly 350 pages here devoted to it. The mysterious slayer com- pletely foiled the best brains of Scotland Yard, averted all suspicion of his identity, and finally, when danger of arrest looms, escapes easily to foreign parts, But the wrong man has meanwhile been tried for the murder and ‘acquitted—of which tedious and irrelevant proceedings we are given the word-by-word record—without adding a single atom to the hoped for speeding up of the action. The authors seem to have spoiled what might have been a fairly good detec- tive story by a too exhaustive and conscien- ticus attention to everything conceivable ex- cept an orderly solution of the crime.
Good find. The Walters are not in this database of Victorian fiction, probably because 1928 is long after the cutoff point of 1901, but it could come in handy for some of the other books the OP bought.
There are people interested in old books for reasons other than readability. Old books can be attractive objects. This one is pretty, but the second copy on abebooks is more expensive. It has its dustjacket.
This one could appeal to those who collect old murder mysteries, attractive books, lurid dustjackets.
Confession: I’ve bought old books just for their appearance.