Edna and Her 20,800 Books

The U.K.'s Edna Foulds has borrowed an amazing 20,800 books from her local library over the last forty years. Now assuming that she read at least 90% of the books she borrowed, that comes out to an astounding pace of reading well over a book per day for forty years. I can't imagine that many people have managed to read at that pace for such a long period of time, so this has to be close to some kind of record.

It is estimated that pensioner Edna Foulds has borrowed an amazing 20,800 books over the past 40 years from her local library.

However, an even more staggering fact is that the 85-year-old great-grandmother has only ever had to pay one fine.

But with an intake of ten a week, Mrs Foulds, from Redcar, east Cleveland, still struggles to name a favourite.

"I just love reading," she says, sitting next to a stack of novels waiting to be devoured and recorded in her black book, where she catalogues the tomes she has borrowed.

The number of books she has taken out must run into many more thousands, because she first joined a library as a child in Leeds, when she checked out Edgar Rice Burroughs' tale of Tarzan.

A member of Redcar Library, in Roseberry Square, since it opened on February 22, 1967, her status as the branch's longest- established and keenest borrower was rewarded this week.
advertisement

She was given a place of honour at the opening of a new library following development work in the square and, naturally, she was allowed to borrow the first book.

I started keeping a list of the books I read a long time ago so that I wouldn't inadvertently buy duplicates or bring them home from the library. But let's just say that Edna has out-read me by a substantial margin and that she should not be concerned with me breaking her record. I'd have to live four or five lifetimes to read 21,000 books. Well done, Edna.