The Book of Lost Books

February 6, 2006
Homer's first work, alluded to by Aristotle, was supposedly a comic epic poem. Byron's memoirs were posthumously destroyed, and Ben Jonson didn't live to complete his final play, a pastoral tragicomedy. Flaubert, who suffered seizures that were probably epileptic, kept the text of a scientifically accurate novel about insanity locked up inside his head. At 15, Scottish freelance critic Kelly began compiling a List of Lost Books when he was shocked to learn that there are no extant plays of Agathon, a celebrated fifth century B.C. tragedian and friend of Euripides. "From Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, Homer to Hemingway, Dante to Ezra Pound, great writers had written works I could not possess," Kelly laments. "The entire history of literature was also the history of the loss of literature." At their best, Kelly's short essays whet the appetite for great works of literature, and serious readers will enjoy scanning these pages looking for curiosities and pondering lost volumes from the oeuvres of Austen, Chaucer and St. Paul. Inevitably, the thesis is more charming than the lengthy execution, and one suspects this would have been much more effective in condensed form as a whimsical article in Harper's
or the Atlantic
. Illus.

March 1, 2006
Kelly, a reviewer for "Scotland on Sunday" presents an account inspired by his love of lost books, which began at the age of 15 on his introduction to Greek literature. He covers manuscripts of stories, poems, and plays that have been destroyed (e.g., Shakespeare -s "Cardenio", misplaced or stolen (e.g., Malcolm Lowry -s "Ultramarine", unfinished (e.g., Chaucer -s "The Canterbury Tales", and even one simply too illegible to read (for which we have Ezra Pound to thank). Also featured are notes by authors who intended to write stories they never began (e.g., Dylan Thomas and "Adventures in the Skin Trade". The writers under discussion span 3000 years of literary history and include Homer, Franz Kafka, Sylvia Plath, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, and William Burroughs. The short chapters, divided by author, contain fascinating facts and details on how the books became lost and when and why they were written. Each lost book has an underlying tale waiting to be read and treasured. This fantastic compendium is highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries and book lovers everywhere." -Susan McClellan, Avalon P.L., Pittsburgh"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.