The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read

by Stuart Kelly

In an age when deleted scenes from Adam Sandler movies are saved, it’s sobering to realize that some of the world’s greatest prose and poetry has gone missing. This witty, wry, and unique new book rectifies that wrong. Part detective story, part history lesson, part exposé, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature’s what-ifs and never-weres.In compulsively readable fashion, Stuart Kelly reveals details about tantalizing vanished works by the famous, the acclaimed, and the influential, from the time of cave drawings to the late twentieth century. Here are the true stories behind stories, poems, and plays that now exist only in ·Aristophanes’ Heracles, the Stage Manager was one of the playwright’s several spoofs that disappeared.·Love’s Labours Won may have been a sequel to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost–or was it just an alternative title for The Taming of the Shrew?·Jane Austen’s incomplete novel Sanditon, was a critique of hypochondriacs and cures started when the author was fatally ill.·Nikolai Gogol burned the second half of Dead Souls after a religious conversion convinced him that literature was paganism.·Some of the thousand pages of William Burroughs’s original Naked Lunch were stolen and sold on the street by Algerian street boys.·Sylvia Plath’s widower, Ted Hughes, claimed that the 130 pages of her second novel, perhaps based on their marriage, were lost after her death.Whether destroyed (Socrates’ versions of Aesop’s Fables), misplaced (Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine was pinched from his publisher’s car), interrupted by the author’s death (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston), or simply never begun (Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, America, a second volume of his memoirs), these missing links create a history of literature for a parallel world. Civilized and satirical, erudite yet accessible, The Book of Lost Books is itself a find.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, History, Reference, Literature, Writing, Classics

370 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Stuart Kelly is literary editor at Scotland on Sunday and a freelance critic and writer. He was raised in the Scottish Borders and studied English at Balliol College, Oxford, gaining a first class degree and a Master of Studies.

His works include The Book of Lost Books: an Incomplete Guide to All the Books You'll Never Read (2005), Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation (2010), which was longlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and The Minister and the Murderer (2018).

Kelly writes for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, The Guardian and The Times. In 2016/17 he was president of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club.

Reviews

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

În opinia autorului, Cartea cărților pierdute ar fi „o bibliotecă imaginară, ipotetică”, o „istorie alternativă a literaturii”, „povestea pierderii literaturii”, o „elegie” a ceea ce ar fi putut exista și nu mai există din vina prostiei și neglijenței noastre. Kelly a folosit mai multe criterii pentru lista lui. Nu menționează doar cărțile cenzurate și distruse / puse pe foc, ci și:

- Cărți care nu s-au păstrat din pricina faptului că, în Antichitate, cartea era un obiect friabil (era scrisă - scriptio continua - pe papirus, era un sul). Aici ar intra majoritatea tragediilor grecești. Din opera fiecărui autor dramatic semnificativ (mă refer, firește, la Eschil, Sophocle și Euripide), s-a păstrat foarte, foarte puțin. Dacă o carte nu mai era copiată, riscul de a se pierde devenea uriaș...

- Cărți pe care autorii nu le-au mai compus, fiindcă au renunțat dezgustați la scris (cazul Arthur Rimbaud). Aici ar intra și romanele pe care Herman Melville nu le-a mai redactat (după miraculosul Moby-Dick, pentru că lipsa de ecou a romanului sus-pomenit (tipărit în 1851) l-a împins într-o depresie severă; a mai compus fără convingere doar poeme epice.

- Cărți pe care autorii n-au apucat să le revadă pentru o ediție definitivă: cazurile Proust, În căutarea timpului pierdut & Robert Musil, Omul fără însușiri. Aș adăuga Roberto Bolaño, 2666.

- Cărți care S-AU păstrat (și nu-și aveau locul în lucrarea lui Kelly), deși autorii lor au cerut expres ca urmașii / legatarii să le distrugă: Vergilius, Eneida, Kafka, o parte din povestiri și parabole, jurnalul, Procesul, Castelul. Titlurile celor două romane aparțin, desigur, lui Max Brod, cel care le-a editat și publicat după moartea prozatorului (survenită în 1924).

- Cărți pe care autorii au avut de gînd să le scrie ori le-au scris doar în gînd și de care, luați cu treburi mai importante, au uitat cu desăvîrșire: Leopardi, Enciclopedia cunoșterii zadarnice / inutile.

- Cărți pe care autorii înșiși le-au distrus: Gerard Manley Hopkins, toate poeziile de dinaintea convertirii, N. V. Gogol, partea a doua din Suflete moarte etc.

- Cărți pe care le-au distrus urmașii pioși ai autorului: neveste, surori, nepoate, stră-nepoate, stră-stră-nepoate, stră-stră-stră-stră-stră-nepoate: jurnalul lui Byron, foarte licențios; o parte din scrisorile lui Dostoievski, o parte din scrisorile lui Cehov, pentru același cuvios motiv.

Și ar mai fi...

Pentru că a folosit criterii dubioase, Stuart Kelly a tipărit o lucrare pestriță, ce nu-și respectă întru totul titlul și poate primi o sumedenie de reproșuri. După părerea mea, el ar fi trebuit să consemneze, mai întîi, toate titlurile operelor menționate de autorii antici și medievali, pe care aceștia pretind că le-au văzut ori le-au citit (cum face patriarhul Photios în vestita lui Biblioteca) și care nu se mai păstrează. N-a procedat așa.

În consecință, Kelly nu spune un singur cuvînt despre tratatul în versuri, compus de „ereticul” Arius, tratat intitulat Thalia = Banchet / Abundență / Prisos, pe care pînă și vîslașii de pe corăbii îl cîntau pentru a-și ritma mișcarea, iar cetățenii din Alexandria îl discutau aprins la răspîntii. S-a păstrat din această compunere despre relația dintre Tată și Fiu în cadrul Sfintei Treimi doar pasajele citate de adversarul lui Arius, sfîntul Atanasie. La fel, Stuart Kelly ar fi putut enumera și tratatele lui Porphyrios & Iulian Apostatul, intitulate probabil Împotriva creștinilor / Contra christianos, azi pierdute. Așadar, din înșiruirea lui Stuart Kelly lipsesc inexplicabil cărți importante.

Autorul nu spune nimic nici despre mult căutatul de către cenzorii medievali Tractatus de tribus impostoribus, al căruit satut incert a fost discutat de istoricul Georges Minois în Le traité des trois imposteurs. Histoire d'un livre blasphématoire qui n'existait pas, Paris, Albin-Michel, 2009.

Ipoteza că, în episodul orbirii lui Polyphemos, Homer și-a descris o experiență personală e o glumă fără sare și piper. Mă bucur, totuși, că Stuart Kelly n-a reiterat supoziția mirobolantă că Homer a fost, în realitate, femeie (cf. Samuel Butler, „The Authoress of Odyssey”, 1897). În schimb, autorul are dreptate să caracterizeze Biblia ca „o Bibliotecă în ruină”, un „mausoleu de autori posibili”, pentru că o parte considerabilă a literaturii apocrife ar fi putut face parte din Canon, dacă înțelepții infailibili nu ar fi decis arbitrar îndepărtarea ei.

Origen (c. 184 - c.253) se cuvine a fi prețuit nu doar pentru faptul că ne-a păstrat fragmente din lucrarea lui Celsus, Cuvîntul adevărat, dar și pentru faptul că a fost o victimă postumă a cenzurii. Declarat eretic de către Sinodul V ecumenic de la Constantinopol din 553, multe dintre scrierile lui consemnate în greacă s-au pierdut. Noroc că a fost tradus în latină de Rufinus și Ieronim.

Mă opresc aici, deja am scris prea mult. Menționez că am citit volumul lui Stuart Kelly în engleză. Nu mă voi pronunța, deci, cu privire la acuratețea traducerii realizate de Irina Negrea. Dar nu mi se pare normal ca în prezentările cărții de pe site-urile anticariatelor și librăriilor numele traducătorului să lipsească. Și nu e singurul caz...

P. S. În Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic (2006), Andrew Dalby afirmă că este posibil - și chiar probabil - ca acest poet [Homer] să fi fost o femeie. Asta ar explica mai bine unele însușiri ale poemului. Samuel Butler are urmași...

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeez, I just checked on the pub date for this book. 2006. Opps. I didn't think it was that long ago.

Let me explain the opps. It relates to the book, so it's all good and relevant.

Sometime in 2006 this book showed up in the store. Maybe it sold a few copies, maybe it didn't. I don't know. But even if it sold a couple inevitably after a few months the people who sign my paychecks and Random House said, "Hey, we don't need to keep this book in the stores anymore, send them home."

Of course I said, No. This book looks interesting. This is the sort of book that booknerds will want to read, some bookish soul will be looking through the Literary Theory section and be joyed by this book. They will buy it! They didn't. Then I thought, some bookish type will be looking through the Literature Studies section (because we changed the name of the section for reasons I can't begin to understand, although I'm sure that a committee was formed and many people who make more than me sat around and thought should we change the name, and probably after quite some time it came to pass and someone on that committee probably felt like they had worked really hard for that paycheck), and they will be interested in this book. I even had the book faced out, and sometimes on a table. But still no one bought it. And I held on to it.

Finally attrition and the realization that I had more important battles ahead of me to fight in the Quixotic war against the bland hegemony of corporate dictates, I let go of some of my old friends, the interesting but unselling books in some of the sort of obscure sections I'm the custodian of. You people had your chance to find this book on the shelf, you've failed me and now I will have to make room for newer books.

Before getting rid of all three copies of the book I decided that I'd read one of those copies. The book had looked interesting to me in the past, and sometimes when I saw it I'd think, I should read this.

On the surface this book looks wonderful. It's a book about books that we will never be able to read. The lost books. The ones burned in infamous conflagrations like the one(s) in Alexandria, and the ones in destroyed in private by their frustrated creators and by surviving loved ones who for various reasons didn't want particular works to be seen by the public. Books that were imagined, planned and never actually written by famous authors. Books that we do have but only in half-finished copies with no idea where the author would have taken the story. Books that were manuscripts that happened to get stolen, misplaced, destroyed in natural disasters or hidden for safe keeping under the ground and now live underneath a modern German housing development.

Isn't this the kind of things that nerdish fans of things love? Don't these artifacts do something for a certain type of person more than the readily available legitimate releases? Aren't there certain authors who maybe I haven't read all their work, but if a mysterious 'lost' book appeared I'd want to read it asap even though I'm not tripping over myself to finish their oeuvre (for me, a lost Kafka story surfacing, would move right to the top of my must-read-now list, but for about fifteen years I've been ho hum about reading Amerika). In musical terms I think that this book appeals to the same type of people who salivate at the idea of more bootleg or basement tapes of Bob Dylan appearing (even if maybe it's just a recording of Dylan burping and farting the melody of "Like a Rolling Stone") than a new album being released.

Unfortunately the book doesn't quite live up to what I wanted or what I thought was being promised by the book. The book does do a good job of showing what the lost books from a whole slew of authors are, but there is also just too much biographical detail given about some of the authors. More lost books, less talk, please! Sometimes the chapters on an author are about the tantalizing clues about what these books would really be like, other times they are mini-bios and description of the author's work with some mention at the end that there was supposed to be another book or two that the author would have written if he or she had lived long enough. Sometimes the lost books are more just the un-realized ideas of an author, which I'm not sure if actually correspond to a lost book. Can a book be lost if it were never really written? If I became a famous writer one day and someone could go through my emails where I mention ideas that I've thought of to friends, and maybe wrote a few pages of before growing bored with the idea is that a lost book or just a shitty idea, or yet another example of laziness and a general unfocused approach to things? Or is something like Pound's Cantos a lost book because he never finished it? Could it have ever been finished?

I liked the book, and found many interesting things in it, but as the scope of the book moved from the ancient world to more modern writers my attention was starting to wane. The ancient world is full of lost books, and it's interesting (to me) to hear about what the great Greek playwrights had written that didn't survive, or the authors mentioned in ancient works whose entire corpus is lost to us. Maybe it's because I don't know that much about some of these people that I thought this part of the book was stronger. As the book moved through the centuries the authors became more familiar to me, and generally the lost books were more often works that authors destroyed themselves after early responses were poor, or just things they never got around to writing or finishing. For every Burton or Byron who had their works destroyed there are more Dickens and Austen types who just happened to succumb to mortality before they could finish what they started. Which it's interesting to point out these things, and I mean that, almost every chapter has some interesting things in it, but the book kind of turned into more a collection of little biographies, generally of writers that I already had little biographies about in my head. Except for a handful of authors and the minor English poets presented a lot of the material in the last third of the books wasn't that new, except sometimes for what the works were that never happened, but these tantalizing bits were just part of a short bit about an authors life.

I can see why this book didn't make it. I think that Random House should have released this as a paperback, as a hardcover there is a kind of steep price for the sort of sale this book depends on. At least for me, little curio type books are much more likely to be gotten if they are around fifteen dollars than twenty-five.

A couple of things that made me laugh, because I'm immature:

By tradition Sappho's husband is asserted to be name Cercylas of Andros, which apparently translates to Mr. Cock from Mansville. I won't even bother to add a joke about Karen here.

One of the playwright Menander's favorite plots could be summarized as "Whoops! I raped someone last night." Yes, this might be misogynistic, but I think this is a classical tradition that should be revitalized into romantic comedies by Hollywood.

[Nastja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Абсолютно туалетная книга – несколько внезапный набор полубиографий писателей, которые в течение жизни что-то не дописали, или у которых в этом самом течении навеки утонули потенциальные шедевры. Затея превосходная, но исполнение – дробные, неровно написанные статьи, в которых Флобер мастурбирует, Золя задыхается от антисемитизма и угарного газа, а Лопе де Вега склочничает с Сервантесом – заметно эту затею удешевляет, превращая ее в сводку литературоведческих анекдотов из серии «как я хотел написать эпос, но тут началась Столетняя война и мне не хватило ресурса», хотя для тех, кто литературоведением никогда не занимался, эта книга может стать хорошим базовым трамплином в историю мировой литературы.

[fleurette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book turned out to be completely different than I expected. It doesn't mean it is bad, not at all. But I am still a bit disappointed.

I have recently read several non-fiction books although I usually stick to fiction. I generally liked those books. And then I came across this book and I liked the idea of it. A book about books that have been lost and which we will never read. Cool.

And that's what this book is about. It consists of short, several-page chapters devoted to different writers in chronological order. Great idea and nice execution. One can see the author's fascination with the whole topic and the very detailed research he conducted.

So why am I disappointed? Because I was expecting to sit down and just read this book quickly just as I do with my fiction (and as I did with my non-fiction books recently). The topic definitely interested me, the chapters are short. Nothing should stop me. But it did not happen.

I wonder what exactly is wrong and it seems to me that this book simply lacks some unique charm. That lightness and humor that you find for example in the books of Bill Bryson. I read one short chapter, sometimes no more than four pages, and I didn't feel the need to start another one. What's more, when I tried to read a few chapters one by one, I lost my concentration, I stopped focusing on the text. I wasn't able to sit down and read 40 or 50 pages at once. Is it bad? No. It's just not a book you read all at once. Rather, one that you read for two, three months, several pages a day with breaks for some other readings. That’s all.

And I just wasn't in the mood for something like that. I try hard for it not to affect my overall rating of this book. But the truth is I read better books. This one is not bad, just not for me I think. Still, love the whole idea.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exhausting and exuberant book acts as both a pocket-sized guide to literature from the Ancient Greeks to Georges Perec, AND compiles the books they never got around to writing.

It is billed as a "bibliophile's dream", which is perhaps a little niche for a book that can be enjoyed both by casual readers and bookworms with an interest in the curios/origins of literature.

Recommended.

[Ensiform · Rating 2 out of 5]

A chronological survey of lost books and books that never were, from ideas for novels that never materialized on paper to valuable manuscripts burnt or censored or mislaid, from the anonymous ancients who assembled Gilgamesh and possible attributions to Homer to Sylvia Plath’s never-completed novel of adultery and the hecatomb of her manuscripts by Ted Hughes. Each chapter is a page or two, five at most, of musings on what this or that author might have accomplished, or how his or her reputation would have changed, if the work in question had survived or been born in the first place. At times there is so little of a “work” to have been “lost” that Kelly merely gives a précis of the author’s most-known work and its importance, as in the Dante or Pound chapters (the Cantos were never lost so much as never unified into Pound’s ambitious, later crazed, vision).

As with any book with so wide a scope, especially one that stops so briefly at each way station through history, this book is heavy on anecdotes, but fails to take the time to convey any deep understanding to the reader. That’s not to say that Kelly doesn’t know the material; he appears to have read everything, indeed he comes off as a bit too clever and writes with a sometimes off-putting erudition: he uses even obscurer forms of already archaic words (exegete, euclionism, daundering, fallalery, etiolated, versifex), sometimes to rather poor effect (“he scurried like an inverted smolt” – what?!); he doesn’t translate French titles (although he translated the other languages); at one point he abruptly writes a paragraph as a logogram without the letter e, and without explanation either. There’s a good bit of intriguing information, of course, such as Kelly’s suggestion that the lack of a trial in The Trial might be “due to textual fragmentation” rather than a philosophical point; but the choppy format and frenetic pace ensured that little stuck with me, I’m afraid.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stuart Kelly's introduction makes it clear that he's, umm, One of Us—that is, a collector and a completist, a Dr. Who and Star Wars fan, and something of a cynic. So if not an Everyman, at least a man after my own heart in some significant ways. Kelly's teenaged interest in big-L Literature merged with that urge for completion to spark his collection of the stories that make up this book.

Kelly has done a creditable job of turning what could have been a mere annotated anti-bibliography into a chronological series of individual narratives with a coherent theme. Each entry is a short biography, usually just two or three pages long, of one or more authors (some of the earlier ones might be better described as "sources") with whom at least one lost work is associated. From Homer and "J" to Sylvia Plath and Georges Perec, Kelly ranges through centuries and continents in compiling these chapters.

Some of 'em work better than others. Kelly makes no bones about his book focusing largely on the figures of English-language literature, and I myself was most engaged when he was describing the lives of the Elizabethans and of the 18th-Century English authors for whom he seemed to have the most enthusiasm. But there are plenty of other realms included as well, from the ancient Greeks and early Muslim writers to Cervantes, Goethe and Dostoevsky. If, occasionally, the prose seemed a bit flat and dry to me, well, there was soon another tale of a lost tale to entertain me.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'd think this book would be right up my street. Lost books -- whether written and then lost, or curtailed by the author's death, or only ever imagined -- fascinate me. In the various books I've read where there are miraculous libraries -- Dream's library in The Sandman, Beast's library in Robin McKinley's retelling, Death's library in Michael Scott's work... -- they always enthrall me. And I love random facts. There are more tigers in private hands in the USA than anywhere else in the world.

But this book got a bit too long-winded for me, stuffed full of too much biographical info and not enough books.

Interesting topic, though.

[Zeynep T. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kitabın fikri çok güzel fakat sonuç başarısız. Fikir de şu; taslağı bir yerlerde unutulan, çalınan, kasıtlı olarak basımı engellenen, sadece ismi ya da konusu bir yerlerde geçmiş, planlanmış ama yazılmamış, yarım kalmış kitaplardan mürekkep varsayımsal bir kütüphanenin dökümü yapılmaya çalışılmış burada. Bazen de şans eseri ortaya çıkıp bugün okuyabildiğimiz eserlerden bahsediliyor.

Anlayacağınız üzere kitap karmakarışık. Bir kere hangi kitaplara daha doğrusu metinlere kayıp denmesi gerektiği konusu tartışmalı. Yazarın kafa karışıklığına bakılırsa her yazar bu kitapta kendine yer bulabilir gibi geliyor bana.

Kitabın başında kabul edildiği üzere bahsedilen yazarlar İngiliz dilinde eser verenler ağırlıkta olacak şekilde ne yazık ki. "Kadın yazarlardan, gay yazarlardan, Avrupa dışındaki yazarlardan"(yazarın ifadesi) daha fazla bahsedilmemesi çok büyük bir eksiklik ve kitabı inanılmaz derecede sıkıcı bir hale getirmiş.

Seçilen yazarlardan kimisiyle ilgili ayrıntılı bir biyografi var, kimisi de belli bir olay çevresinde ele alınmış. Bu hususla ilgili bir sistematik yok.

Ve gelelim çeviriye; oldukça başarısız. Elimdeki baskı Ocak 2009 tarihli birinci basım. Ne bir editör ne de son okuma yapan kişiye ait bilgi var. Yazarın sarkastik ve biraz dolambaçlı dili Türkçe'de verilememiş. Anlatım bozukluğu içeren ve noktalama işaretlerinin yanlış kullanıldığı cümleler mevcut. Redaksiyon uzakta bir köyün adı olarak kalmış.

İçinde edebiyat tarihiyle ilgili ilginç anektodlar bulunan bir kitap. Çok merak ediyorsanız şans verebilirsiniz. Fakat satın almak yerine kütüphaneden ödünç alarak okuduğum için mutlu olduğumu da belirtmeden geçemeyeceğim.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with rating this book, for its erudition alone it apparently deserves four if not five stars? Maybe but I can easily point to one incredibly inaccurate entry and one obviously ridiculous story.

The inaccurate entry refers to the Villa Papyri in Herculaneum where he states that it was only recently that archaeologists realised that carbonised 'bundles' were manuscripts not bags of groceries. The carbonised 'bundles' had been recognised as manuscript scrolls since the villa's discovery in the 18th century, thus the name Villa Papyri, the problem was unrolling them without reducing them to ashes. Various wonderfully bizarre and inventive schemes were tried, including freeze drying, all failed so that there had been had been a moratorium on attempting to unravel the incredibly fragile manuscript scrolls. It was the lifting of this moratorium and the new techniques to 'read' without damaging the fragile scrolls that Stuart Kelly gave such an inaccurate account. This is not nit picking, any popular account of the discovery and excavation of Herculaneum mentions the whole sage of the Villa Papyri manuscripts so it is not information confined to abstruse academic studies.

The other obvious falsehood, exaggeration or urban legend (to be kind) is that William Burroughs abandoned hundreds of pages of the manuscript of 'The Naked Lunch' when left Tangiers in 1958
and afterwards Algerian street boys were selling them for a dollar a page. The problem is that Burroughs was totally unknown, so a typewritten page of his work was worthless as anything but scrap or toilet paper. Also one dollar was an immense amount of money anywhere in North Africa at the time and would certainly have bought the services of one street boy if not several and the boys bodies would have been a far more likely object of interest to most visitors in the 1950's then pages of manuscript by an unknown American. There is also the question of how 'Algerian' street boys come to be selling the pages when Tangiers is in Morocco? Does the author not know the difference between Morocco and Algeria?

These are minor points but they certainly left me with a sense of caution towards the authors reliability and erudition in areas I was unfamiliar with - which is, of course, the bulk of the book.

For me the book, while being extensive, is flat and without passion. I expected something of the obsession that leads a man (and they are almost invariably men) to become so drawn into seeking completeness. There is no sense of fun in the search for any of these missing manuscripts, or joy at those that are found, nor is there any sense of loss for those irretrievably lost. For me this makes for a less than satisfying book.

Stuart Kelly writes about not only books that were written which are lost but those that never got finished or even written. The lost classics of the ancient world and the manuscripts, like those of Isaac Babel lost in the maw of the Soviet secret police are sad enough but those not finished or never written are, for me, the saddest.

Although not part of his run-down of the lost and unfinished, I find mine in more recent years. Between 1986 and 1998 George Stambolian and then David Berman edited a series of seven anthologies called 'Men on Men' containing what they thought was the best new writing by gay male writers. There is not one of those anthologies that doesn't contain a piece by a writer who, upon investigation, you will find died from AIDs and whose only published work is in that anthology. Even amongst contributors who had a novel published it is all too often their only one for the same reason.

In terms of general literary anthologies published at the beginning of the new millennium it is invariably the case that far fewer of the contributors had literary careers then if you look back on similar anthologies from the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's or 1990's. Far fewer books are being published, or bought by our library services, or read. Despite the opportunities that new online technologies promised there is no sign of a renaissance in publishing, only a larger and larger empty space where books not written exist as absence that hurts even more then that felt for works, like Babel's, that once existed but are now lost. They at least existed, it is unlikely but not impossible, that in some misfiled box in an archive a lost work or works by Babel's may one day be found and the carbonised scrolls in the villa Papyri my reveal the complete poems by Sappho. We can hope and dream for that but books never written there is only silence and silence is, and always will be, death.

[Howard Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun breezy book about "lost" books; those being books that have been lost to us either through deathm destruction, or authorial neglect. Kelly starts with the ancients, such as Aeschelus, Sophocles, and Aristotle many of whose works were consigned to the pyre during the burning of the Library of Alexandria. He then moves into the modern world, with stops along the way for Confusious, Shakespere, Dickens, Jane Austen, and many more. The chapters are short, which makes this a fairly light read. Kelly only scratches the surface, of course. If you read a book such as Plutarch's Lives, you will see references to literally hundreds of ancient works that have sinmply disappeared, living on only as titles. If you like to read, this is a fun book to dip into. If anything, it is a reminder that what we think of as the "permanent" western canon has often hung by the slenderest of reeds.

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 1 out of 5]

The lost opportunities of this book:

- only 4 women in 81 chapters
- often fails to talk about the lost books when considering famous authors and prefers rehashing well-known information about their well-known works
- comes across as kind of bigoted and mean-spirited, particularly in any chapter about religion, especially in the chapter on Joseph Smith (I'm not LDS but ouch)
- the author comes across as the type of person who deflects any criticism by saying his comments were humorous. Maybe this impression is because he fails to engage meaningfully with any of his subjects and there's no real depth here. No mourning that we won't ever get to read these books that are lost to the vagaries of time, or the fireplaces of their writers. The real missed opportunity is that I wish someone else had written this book.

[brisingr · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seemed very interesting in the beggining, but as months passed, I was getting more and more bored at the concept of this book.
But!! It is written in a very friendly and easy to understand way and it makes it accesible to any kind of reader and it did made me angry at all the ways in which we can lose stories, so I guess it did its job.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Sure, it's "esoteric and demanding" (New York Times), but that quality seems to be The Book of Lost Books' charm. A regular literary critic for Scotland on Sunday, this is Stuart Kelly's first book, a work born from a lifelong fascination with the missing pieces of literary history. The breadth of Kelly's knowledge impressed critics as much as his ability to be both approachable and authoritative, even though his sense of "what counts as

[Quirkyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry in places, but well worth ones time.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected this to be a lot lighter, more of a hodgepodge, but instead it’s a nicely detailed history of World Literature, as told chronologically through works that have vanished, been destroyed, or never were written. Since, in general, the only histories of World Literature I’ve read are light hodgepodges, I learned a lot about the stuff that was actually published in addition to the stuff what’s missing. Kelly is breezy, clear, and witty, and only becomes a little coy and judgmental when discussing 20th century authors. And because of him, I put Gibbon and Suetonius on my TBR shelves.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was...disappointing. I had hoped for some great stories, some books I'd never heard of, and some interesting backgrounds of authors. What I got was a whole bunch of 18th century white dudes who wrote some books and hinted about other books they didn't write. There were 3 women profiled in the whole book and just a few non-European authors.
I had to renew the book 3 times because it was such a struggle to slog through most of the profiles, but dang it I wasn't going to let the book win! I finished it, but my eyes glazed over and I lost interest so many times.

[Rob Branigin · Rating 2 out of 5]

great idea, lousy execution.

the author's long-winded, vague, tiresome style torpedoes (and SINKS) a first-class idea.

one of those books where you read a paragraph & go "what?"

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sometimes poignant and yet lively and drily humorous survey of literature, considering the many lost works as well as unfinished masterpieces and even proposed-but-never-written books.

[Jack Holt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breezy. I think this delivered everything the cover blurb said it would. I never knew that Homer had a third book -- and it was a comedy no less. He never seemed like the funny type when he was "singing the wrath of Achilles."

Nor did I know that Julius Caesar had composed poetry, nor that his adopted son, the Emperor Augustus, politely suggested that his uncle's poetry should never be copied or circulated again. (When you are the Emperor and hold everyone's life in your hands, you can apparently make sure that your literary suggestions / censorship are obeyed. )

But most of the stories are sad rather than clever.

The works of the poet Gallus -- who was the inspiration for Catullus and Ovid -- have been lost to history. Caedmon's songs are all lost but one. And on and on. Loss after loss of things that were beautiful once.

Not all of the works were "lost" per se. Although many chapters describe works of ancient and modern authors that were lost as history went on, several of the chapters veer into other territory. It was interesting to find out that several authors had destroyed their early or later ouevre, and I was saddest to read about Sir Walter Scott's mental and physical decline and the two half-penned novels he left behind in Malta in manuscript form. (Some of the works discussed were never completed at all; and that seems like a cheat somehow. How can they be "lost" if they never were at all?)

At the end of the day, what started out as a joyful discovery became a little more like a sad tale. A prose 'Ozymandias' for book-lovers to remind us that our favorite things may not last at all.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book for people who want to know a little bit of everything. This book has been sitting next to my bed for the past few months. Each chapter is a fairly concise summary of a well known author, focused on a work, or works of that author that has been lost. Moving forward through time from the Ancient world to modern times, it provides a very interesting selection of western literature. While it is depressing to learn how much has been lost, it also makes one aware of how very much is still out there. It seems clear that Stuart Kelly is familiar with the works of each of the authors he writes about, and if that's the case, even if he's read nothing else, which I doubt, the man is astoundingly well read within western literature. No doubt, this is an Oxbridge education in literature at work.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't care about 5/6th of those authors in the book and could think of 20 off the top of my head, I wager--that didn't make the list. This book feels like it was crafted with someone who has OCD, rather than an interest in how unfinished works shed light on the human condition.

That is, up until the closing with comments on the decaying of the compact disk--an symbol of the facile optimism of the 1980s. The second law of Thermodynamics, etc.

"Why, then, do we strive? In trying to preserve what makes us human, we prove our humanity....Just as any human life reverberates, causes change and affects our thinking and feeling even after the death of the individual person, so does our culture, that accumulation of countless lost lives. WE struggle unsuccessfully against oblivion, and the struggling process us our success".

[Guillermojimenezespneo]

De pronto salta la liebre y te enteras de esos neuróticos que desde pequeños viven obsesionados por conseguir lo que sea que los tiene obsesionados. En este caso libros o autores o ambos. Mi amigo Stuart nos da un excelente repaso de los libros que si se escribieron se perdieron, de los que se quedaron en la etapa del deseo de escribirlos en la mente de sus autores, etc. Me recuerda a los eruditos que a falta de las obras de los autores clásicos, dedicaron su tiempo de vida a recopilar lo que los escritores posteriores o contemporáneos describieron lo que habían escrito y nos han legado párrafos maravillosos de los presocráticos por ejemplo, del mismo Jeshua, de Sócrates y de un largo etcétera. Estupendo.

[Corvonero · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has all the mystique and wonder of a week old sock. It feels like a robot wrote it - the writing is just so dry and casual.

Despite its chronological order that begins at the invention of the Alphabet, there is hardly any talk of books or any kind of writings from those times - instead the author quickly jumps to pompous Greek playwrights, and gives a few boring anecdotes about each one, before jumping to the next after just a few pages.

Before you know it, you have arrived at the tired and familiar list of stuffy English and French writers from the modern era, and any curiosity I might have felt about ancient books lost to the sands of time is now similarly dead and gone. Thanks, but no thanks.

[Pa Xing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. This guy has lots of charm and his insouciant honesty is fantastic, like when he talks about the Mormons. I enjoyed reading this book and it has spured me to read what I can, it's really the kind of book for people who feel they are losing out and this is like a glaring reminder of how much less you have to read and stop whining you c***!!!!

[Mouse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was enjoying reading this book and then I lost it! See what I did there??? Lol 😂
This is an interesting concept, good idea, mediocre execution. It’s not bad, it’s just sort of dry... and boring. Definitely hard to get through, a bit of a slog actually, but good for taking some notes to further investigate some of these books mentioned.

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's too bad Borges didn't write this book. I liked the idea of such a book but mostly didn't care about the particular books that he wrote about. He does mention the lost 113 pages, but just to make fun of it.

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty interesting to flip through. I admit, I mostly skimmed the last 100 pages for authors that I recognized. Also very depressing.

[Naomi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Engaging tone, but rather a lot more ancient and/or depressed biographies of writers than I expected.

[Alessia Simoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vi siete mai chiesti se dell’autore che state leggendo in questo momento non sia andato perduto qualcosa? Vi siete mai chiesti quanti e quali capolavori della letteratura non potete leggere perché, semplicemente, sono stati divorati dalle fiamme – a volte per volontà dello stesso autore, altre per semplici incidenti – sono stati smarriti o, addirittura, non sono mai stati scritti e non soltanto per cause di forza maggiore?

Ebbene, se ve lo siete chiesti, Il libro dei libri perduti è il saggio che fa per voi. Se non ve lo siete mai chiesti, fidatevi e leggetelo comunque: scoprirete cose bellissime e magari vi nascerà un po’ di istinto di ricerca.

Il saggio, come spiega l’autore nell’introduzione, nasce dalla sua passione per la lettura e soprattutto dalla sua curiosità verso ciò che non può leggere: e da qui si dipana il suo percorso di ricerca che culmina nella stesura di libro. In realtà, il concetto di perdita di Stuart Kelly è da intendersi in senso lato: non sono inclusi, infatti, soltanto i libri che non possiamo leggere perché sono andati fisicamente perduti, com’è il caso di svariati autori dell’antichità. Sono inclusi anche i libri incompiuti e quelli che, per qualche motivo, non sono stati scritti. In questi ultimi casi non si parla soltanto di quei libri interrotti e/o non scritti per morte dell’autore: in certi casi abbiamo davanti anche libri che, semplicemente, sono stati ideati, discussi in carteggi, ma poi abbandonati. È un concetto che, stando ad alcune recensioni che ho letto, ha scocciato qualcuno; ovviamente, la tesi che va per la maggiore è che, se mi vendi un libro che parla di libri perduti, mi aspetto che mi parli di quelli effettivamente perduti. Io personalmente ho accettato senza problemi la visione personale dell’autore, ma sinceramente non ho condiviso alcune sue scelte. Ma di questo parliamo più tardi.

Il saggio si articola in più di sessanta capitoli, ciascuno dedicato a un solo autore e non alla singola opera perduta. Come c’è da aspettarsi, si parte con la letteratura antica; il primo capitolo è anzi dedicato a tutti gli autori anonimi, idea che personalmente ho apprezzato moltissimo. E poi, in ordine cronologico, arriviamo alla letteratura più recente. Ogni capitolo è piuttosto breve – mai più di qualche pagina – e in questo senso si presta benissimo anche come manuale da consultazione: si può leggerlo a spizzichi e bocconi, magari in concomitanza alla lettura degli autori lì citati. Anche letto tutto d’un fiato, però, non è pesante, scorre bene e la brevità dei capitoli, nonché lo stile dell’autore, accattivante, particolare nella scelta dei paragoni, il suo utilizzo degli aneddoti, concorre a rendere la lettura più scorrevole, nonostante non si tratti per nulla di un saggio leggero, tutt’altro.

Ovviamente, non c’è da aspettarsi di ritrovare nel libro ogni singolo autore di cui si è perso qualcosa; il saggio sarebbe lunghissimo, la ricerca alla sua base infinita, e quindi dobbiamo partire con l’idea di essere davanti a una cernita che, con tutta probabilità, segue i gusti dell’autore da una parte e i sentieri obbligati tracciati dalla ricerca dall’altra. Ecco, è sulla scelta degli autori da includere – e di riflesso, quella degli autori da escludere – che ho qualche perplessità. Per fare un esempio pratico, l’autore ha incluso un capitolo su Dante Alighieri. Lusinghiero per noi italiani, ovviamente, ma di fatto questo capitolo racconta il ritrovamento degli ultimi canti del Paradiso da parte del figlio di Dante, Jacopo, otto mesi dopo la morte del padre, così come lo raccontò Boccaccio nel suo Trattatello in laude di Dante. Ora, posso capire cosa stesse dietro a questa scelta; quei tredici canti non si trovavano, erano perduti, appunto, ma poi grazie a un sogno premonitore, se vogliamo credere a Boccaccio, furono ritrovati. Ma è questo che mi spiazza, che sono stati ritrovati. Non capisco la necessità di inserire questo episodio in un libro che, stando al titolo, mi promette una storia parallela della letteratura riguardante ciò che non posso più leggere. E io il Paradiso di Dante posso leggerlo. Possiamo disquisire sul fatto che, forse, Dante volesse lavorare ancora su quei canti, attendere a renderli pubblici, limarli… ma in ogni caso, e comunque quei canti siano stati trovati, oggi il Paradiso è completo. Inserirlo in un libro che vuole presentarci i libri perduti mi è sembrata una scelta poco condivisibile, soprattutto perché alla letteratura latina, ad esempio, sono dedicati solo due capitoli (Ovidio e i Cesari… sì, tutti i Cesari!) e qualche fuggevolissima citazione nell’introduzione. Non so, vista la mole di autori esclusi, e visto anche l’ampio spazio dedicato alla letteratura greca rispetto a quella latina, mi è sembrato che includere anche Dante non abbia avuto molto senso, tanto più che non fa altro che riportare un episodio che penso conosciamo tutti. Considerazione da italiana, lo so, la Divina Commedia non viene studiata all’estero come la studiamo noi, sta di fatto che non ho condiviso questa scelta. Mi ha infastidita invece molto meno quando ha parlato di opere incompiute (vedi il capitolo su Jane Austen e quello su Kafka, che ho trovato meraviglioso), e anche quando ha presentato opere che sono state ideate e poi non scritte (vedi il capitolo su Alexander Pope, e sugli otto versi del suo poema epico che non terminò mai). In fin dei conti, accettando il concetto di perdita che l’autore presenta, questi sono libri perduti: anche solo in parte, ma perduti. Certo, spingersi a definirli capolavori a prescindere mi pare esagerato, però sarebbe stato bello vedere come Kafka pensava di far finire Il castello, o Il processo, o come Pope avrebbe realizzato la sua idea sul Brutus.

Una cosa su cui ho sentimenti contrastanti riguardo a questo saggio è la totale mancanza di bibliografia, note a piè di pagina e lista delle opere citate. A questo proposito c’è una nota nell’introduzione: l’autore spiega che gli pareva ironico inserire note e bibliografie che avrebbero portato a vicoli ciechi, e quindi ha pensato che fosse più interessante lasciare al lettore tutta l’opera di ricerca. Come lettrice l’idea mi affascina. Come amante delle bibliografie, invece, non apprezzo; prima di tutto questo può spiazzare il lettore, perché fa dipendere tutto tantissimo dalla disponibilità di determinati testi nelle biblioteche della propria zona. L’autore cita alcuni titoli – per lo più enciclopedie e storie della letteratura – che non so se si trovino nelle biblioteche italiane. E comunque, si rischia di non trovare affatto quello che invece ha trovato lui… e io muoio davvero dalla voglia di sapere dove ha trovato quella sfilza di aneddoti interessantissimi di cui ha infarcito il suo saggio. Non è una questione di ‘volere la pappa pronta’, come si suol dire… è anche e soprattutto il riconoscimento del lavoro altrui che, in qualche modo, ha permesso a lui di fare il suo, di arrivare a quella composizione. Ho sentito tantissimo la mancanza di una bibliografia, o almeno delle note a piè di pagina che indicassero anche solo da dove era stata presa la citazione del momento; in un libro del genere, penso che il lettore parta già con l’idea che qualsiasi ricerca decida di fare per conto suo sarà destinata prima a poi a imbattersi nella perdita definitiva della traccia. La giustificazione che tutto sarebbe andato a finire in vicoli ciechi, a mio modo di vedere, cozza con le premesse del libro: se mi presenti un libro sulla letteratura ormai definitivamente perduta, non posso certo aspettarmi di trovare testi che analizzino opere che sono state lette per l’ultima volta secoli fa, ecco. In ogni caso, almeno una lista delle opere che ci sono pervenute e che l’autore cita poteva essere inserita; i capitoli sono brevi e non è difficilissimo trovarle, ma non credo che una lista avrebbe ucciso qualcuno. Rimpiango comunque la bibliografia.

In definitiva, se vi piace la saggistica, se ve la sentite di affrontare il possibile desiderio di imbarcarvi in una ricerca che non porterà a nulla di certo, e se non vi spaventa la mole di libri che non leggerete perché non esistono più e/o non sono mai esistiti, questo è il libro per voi. Devo dire che mi ha dato svariati spunti di lettura, e questo è sempre e indubbiamente un merito. Scorre bene e vi farà sembrare leggero un saggio che, in realtà, è zeppo di informazioni e spunti. Per me è da non perdere, e non è un gioco di parole.