As books go, James Clerk Maxwell’s “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity” is hardly a family identify, but it surely has gained renewed consideration after a duplicate was returned final month to a Massachusetts library almost 120 years overdue.

“This is definitely the longest overdue book that we’ve gotten back,” Olivia Melo, the library’s director, stated on Sunday. “And we do get some books back after, you know, 10, 15 years.”

The e book, printed in 1881 and written by a prominent Scottish physicist, was an early scientific textual content laying out electrical theories.

Its 208 pages, certain by a cranberry-colored cowl, are full of technical jargon and medleys of elaborate mathematical equations. The library acquired the e book in 1882, Ms. Melo stated.

It was probably both final checked out on Feb. 14, 1904, or Feb. 14, 1905. The light stamp makes it troublesome to make certain, however a faint round form after the “190-” suggests the later date, she stated. A previous checkout stamp clearly reads Dec. 10, 1903.

On May 30, the library was contacted by Stewart Plein, a curator of uncommon books at West Virginia University’s library in Morgantown, W.Va.

“We have recently received a donation that included a book from your library,” Ms. Plein wrote in a observe. “There is no withdrawn information. Would you like it returned to you?”

Libraries mark books “withdrawn” to point they now not personal a e book. The absence of such a mark advised to Ms. Plein that it nonetheless belonged to the New Bedford Free Public Library. She mailed the e book again.

Who initially checked out the e book and the place it had been all these years was not instantly identified.

The e book is in “optimal shape,” Ms. Melo stated. The phrases are legible. The backbone is sturdy.

“It was very well taken care of,” Ms. Melo stated. “Whoever had the book all this time obviously had it in a controlled room. It wasn’t being thumbed through.”

The greater than 140-year-old e book isn’t the primary to search out its method again to its unique lender after so many many years.

Last month, a duplicate of “The Bounty Trilogy” by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, printed in 1932, was returned to a Washington state library 81 years after it was checked out, CNN reported. In 2021, a copy of Kate Douglas Wiggin’s “New Chronicles of Rebecca,” still in “immaculate” condition, turned up at an Idaho library after 110 years.

When “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity” was checked out, the New Bedford Free Public Library charged a one-cent price for day by day it was late.

Had that late price charge remained and not using a cap, the borrower would have owed roughly $430. Without a cap, at in the present day’s late price charge of 5 cents per day, the stability can be greater than $2,100.

But late charges had been capped many years in the past at $2 to encourage folks to return their books, Ms. Melo stated.

Though the e book in the present day doesn’t command an astronomical value on the open market — it was mass-produced, and a similar copy is listed for sale online at $600 — “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity” does maintain sentimental and historic worth, Ms. Melo stated.

In the digital age, it speaks to the “value of the printed word,” she stated.

“This book is going to be here 100 years from now because now we’re going to continue to preserve it and take care of it,” Ms. Melo stated. “For future generations, this book will be here.”