ON READING, WRITING AND LIVING WITH BOOKS

Celebrating its 175th anniversary with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it. 'This little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention of the press can anything short of a universal convulsion of nature abolish it.' Containing 'How Should One Read a Book?' by Virginia Woolf, Letter from Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins, Letter from Charles Dickens to George Eliot, Authorship by George Eliot, My Books by Leigh Hunt and The London Library by E. M. Forster, this is a book for all readers and writers who draw strength, solace or inspiration from the presence of books. Hear the words of some of the most illustrious figures of the last two centuries who have written, thought and worked in The London Library which was founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle in reaction to the 'museum headache' brought on by the crowds in the British Museum Reading Room. Over time some of these celebrated members have shared with each other or with an interested public their views on the delights, challenges and joys of reading, writing and living with books. From essays on dieting in the 1860s to instructions for gentlewomen on trout fishing, from advice on the ill health caused by the 'modern' craze of bicycling to travelogues from Norway, one of our favourites here is Leigh Hunt's My Books published in 1899. 'I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus and my Arabian Nights; then above them at my Italian poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my romances and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on a writing desk; and thought how natural it was in CL to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's Homer.' Paperback, 92pp.