The Library : A Catalogue Of Wonders

Author: Stuart Kells

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $32.99 AUD
  • : 9781925355994
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : The Text Publishing Company
  • :
  • : 0.382
  • : June 2017
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : Australia
  • : September 2017
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Stuart Kells
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  • : Paperback
  • : 917
  • :
  • : English
  • : 027.009
  • :
  • :
  • : 288
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Barcode 9781925355994
9781925355994

Description

"Excellent . . . Tracks the history of that greatest of all cultural institutions." --The Washington Post


 


Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve. Some still exist today; some are lost, like those of Herculaneum and Alexandria; some have been sold or dispersed; and some never existed, such as those libraries imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, Umberto Eco, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others.


 


Ancient libraries, grand baroque libraries, scientific libraries, memorial libraries, personal libraries, clandestine libraries: Stuart Kells tells the stories of their creators, their prizes, their secrets, and their fate. To research this book, Kells traveled around the world with his young family like modern-day "Library Tourists." Kells discovered that all the world's libraries are connected in beautiful and complex ways, that in the history of libraries, fascinating patterns are created and repeated over centuries. More important, he learned that stories about libraries are stories about people, containing every possible human drama.


 


The Library is a fascinating and engaging exploration of libraries as places of beauty and wonder. It's a celebration of books as objects, a celebration of the anthropology and physicality of books and bookish space, and an account of the human side of these hallowed spaces by a leading and passionate bibliophile.

Promotion info

* Interviews and extracts placed in major broadsheet weekend supplements * Events in notable Australian libraries * National and local radio interviews e.g. RN Books and Arts * Reviews in major newspapers e.g. Australian, NZ Herald * Review coverage in general publications e.g. Big Issue, Monthly * Wide review coverage in literary press e.g. Lifted Brow, Australian Book Review * Wide online review coverage from book bloggers and special interest websites

Author description

Stuart Kells is an author and book-trade historian. His 2015 book, Penguin and the Lane Brothers, won the Ashurst Business Literature Prize. An authority on rare books, he has written and published on many aspects of print culture and the book world. Stuart lives in Melbourne with his family. He is currently writing a book about Shakespeare's library.