We take a trip to the books of libraries past in The Secret Library.
The Secret Library – the blurb
As well as leafing through the well-known titles that have helped shape the world in which we live, Oliver Tearle also dusts off some of the more neglected items to be found hidden among the bookshelves of the past.
You’ll learn about the forgotten Victorian novelist who outsold Dickens, the woman who became the first published poet in America and the eccentric traveler who introduced the table-fork to England. Through exploring a variety of books – novels, plays, travel books, science books, cookbooks, joke books and sports almanacs – The Secret Library highlights some of the most fascinating aspects of our history. It also reveals the surprising connections between various works and historical figures. What links Homer’s Iliad to Aesop’s Fables? Or Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack to the creator of Sherlock Holmes?
The Secret Library brings these little-known stories to light, exploring the intersections between books of all kinds and the history of the Western world over 3,000 years.
Whistle stop tour
As Tearle expertly puts it The Secret Library ‘offers a whistle stop tour around an imaginary library stuffed full of titles both familiar and forgotten’. From the classics to the currents this book samples them all. Delivered in a similar style to the recently read At Home by Bill Bryson, it’s perfect dinner party trivia for anyone with half an interest in books. Those you expect to make an appearance do (Dickens, Shakespeare) yet I bet you haven’t read the angle Tearle takes about them. I mean how many people knew Samuel Pepys buried a parmesan cheese in his garden to save it from the Great Fire of London? It’s the lesser known authors (and books) that are the stars of the show in Secret Library though. There’s also an appearance, or two, from Monty Python!
Be more bibliognost
The Secret Library is clearly well researched, yet it’s simply set out in short bursts and never boring. The origins of various words are examined, there’s a recipe for possibly the first ever salad and I now know the first book sold on Amazon. Yes that was a sad day, but it helps my pub quiz knowledge immensely! I now also really want to read T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land (Please tell me there is a jumper somewhere with the words Complimenti Bitch! on it). Where the recently read The Most Beautiful Walk left me alienated, Tearle found a way to make this book inclusive. You don’t have to be a bibliognost (one who knows books) to enjoy it. It’s a skill to make a list of books (effectively what The Secret Library is), enjoyable, but it is, it really is.
