New Hampshire man dodges $12k fine after returning magazine to library 132 years la

Anyone who regularly uses a library will have been hit by a late fee at some point. Usually it’s just a couple of bucks, but occasionally you find a book that’s fallen down the back of the sofa that librarians have been hunting for for the best part of a year that’s amassed maybe $50 in fines. Eek.

So spare a thought for New Hampshire man John Hanson, 84, who discovered the September 1894 issue of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine in his possession, with the card indicating it was 48,220 days past its return date to the Concord Public Library. As per the library’s rules, this meant he was staring down the barrel of a $12,055 fine.

The obvious answer would be to stay quiet. After all, even the most determined librarian would have written off this magazine after 132 years of it not being returned. Then the library announced a temporary fine freeze, allowing users to return items long past their return date and not incur a fine.

“I bet you haven’t seen anything like this”

As per its Facebook post, the library “expected long overdue books to be returned, but certainly not something from the late 19th century!” They continue: “This September 1894 issue of “The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine” has been hanging around John’s house for decades. He has no idea how it ended up at his home, but upon seeing the fine freeze article in the Concord Monitor, he decided that it was time to return it to its original home!”

Concord Public Library archivist told NBC News of her surprise when Hanson appeared at her desk with the magazine. She says he told her, “I have a book to return, and I bet you haven’t seen anything like this,’ ” she recalled Hanson telling her. “I honestly thought it was going to be from the 1980s, ’90s or 2000s. But then he pulled this out, and I was like, ‘Ooo, tell me more.”

Sadly, it doesn’t appear that anyone who’s spent the best part of a century eager to get their hands on the September CIMM can take it out, as “it won’t be placed back in circulation, but perhaps it deserves a spot in the Concord Room.” They also underline that, due to the terms of the fine freeze, John “won’t have to pay the $12,055 fine for being 48,220 days overdue.”

However, I’m happy to report that you can peruse the magazine for yourself online. The contents include a travel article on German schools, a short story titled “Jake Stanwood’s Gal”, an instalment of a man’s genuinely impressive-sounding bicycle ride across Asia, and a selection of Edgar Allen Poe’s correspondence. At 159 pages of dense text, it’s a lengthy read, though I suppose they didn’t have TikTok in 1894, so they didn’t have much else to do but read inch-thick magazines.