First-edition copy of Robert Burns's debut collection is on display

If you're sensitive to book mistreatment, skip this item ...

... but a rare, albeit incomplete, first edition of Robert Burns's debut poetry collection is going on display.

The first fifty pages of this copy of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect were torn out years ago by a barber looking to clean his razors with the pages, reports the Guardian.

It's among the eighty-four copies of the book believed to still be in existence, down from the original 1786 run of 612 copies.

Now through February 5, you can look at the damaged edition at Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries in Fife, Scotland.

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