The Book of Lost Books
An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read
Published on 9. June 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-1-84697-123-5 (ISBN)
Description
The Book of Lost Books is a book of stories involving kings, heretics, untimely interruptions and back room deals, falling tortoises and fairy princesses, train crashes and war atrocities, bravery, cowardice, rent boys, chamber maids, love, quests, puzzles and a crocodile.
From Homer to Jane Austen, Shakespeare to Ernest Hemingway, this is an account of books destroyed, misplaced, never finished, or never even begun. With academic shaggy dog stories, swashbuckling historical fables, wry ironies and imaginative fantasia, The Book of Lost Books is the perfect read for all bibliophiles.
Hilarious, insightful, endlessly fascinating, sometimes shocking - The Book of Lost Books is a wonderfully quirky but utterly romantic saga of our love affair with books.
From Homer to Jane Austen, Shakespeare to Ernest Hemingway, this is an account of books destroyed, misplaced, never finished, or never even begun. With academic shaggy dog stories, swashbuckling historical fables, wry ironies and imaginative fantasia, The Book of Lost Books is the perfect read for all bibliophiles.
Hilarious, insightful, endlessly fascinating, sometimes shocking - The Book of Lost Books is a wonderfully quirky but utterly romantic saga of our love affair with books.
Reviews / Votes
'Clever and highly entertaining ... recall[s] John Aubrey's gossipy 'Brief Lives' and Lytton Strachey's 'Eminent Victorians' ... a many-splendored thing' -- Michiko Kakutani * The New York Times * 'Lively and diverting' * The Spectator * 'A fascinating anthology of writings, which will be quite new to most people and certainly deserve to be preserved' -- Muriel SparkMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Birlinn General
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
346 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84697-123-5 (9781846971235)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2012
Polygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited
€10.79
Available for download
Person
Stuart Kelly was raised in the Scottish Borders and studied English at Balliol College Oxford, gaining a first class degree and a Master of Studies. He is the Literary Editor of Scotland on Sunday and a freelance critic and writer.