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

A great tour-de-force by Kelly as he spans millennia covering writers, famous and obscure, throughout history that have had their writing misplaced or destroyed for whatever reason.

Homer, Aristophanes, Philip K. Dick and Jane Austen are all namechecked and I recommend keeping a dictionary handy while reading this as I have never come across so many words new to me before. Of course, all these new words were promptly forgotten and sadly I am no more intelligent than when I first picked up this book.

I read the second edition which provides us with the bonus information around how "The Book of Lost Books" almost became a lost book itself.

A survey of lost manuscripts, destroyed unique copies, death-interrupted masterpieces, rejected commissions, and otherwise unreadable titles, from unknown precursors of Gilgamesh to Georges Perec's unfinished 53 Days. I suppose the most horrifying chapter is on Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, whose manuscript was destroyed by John Stuart Mills's maid. Kelly almost puts you in the room when Mills makes his "ashen-faced and barely comprehensible" confession. Before then, you meet Dante, Chaucer, and Villon; Donne and Jonson, Sterne and Goethe, Flaubert and the detestable Gogol; and the Twentieth Century is not neglected, in spite of the advent of photocopy machines.

Beginning at the very beginning of the written word, the missing parchments or symbols that first told a story from one human to another, and finishing with missing works from Sylvia Plath and George Perec, this is a book of missing literature. Some of the works were actually completed, then stolen, lost or burned. Other novels or epic poems were begun then left unfinished, while many others were essentially rumors, just talked about by the intended authors (Milton seems to have enjoyed claiming the vocation of poet more than producing the work) but the proposed themes never appeared.
I can't imagine how difficult it would be to research books that haven't existed in hundreds of years, or even thousands, so Stuart has done something most show more people wouldn't attempt. The chapters are short but informative, giving the reader reasons why the author was important (or not), his or her status or situation and why the work is lost. show less

Full marks for research, but at times I felt that his treatment of "lost" wobbled a bit. The core meaning, of course, is that completed manuscripts have gone missing, and vanished from history. But he also includes books never written or started but never finished, which opens the range of possible entries nigh infinite. These latter are usually of less interest than the former, but presumably more accessible as subject matter, and thus forms the bulk of the text. All very interesting, but in truth my attention began to wane as we read of yet another writer's schoolboy scribblings that have not been preserved, or a sketched opus that never got written. Fewer entries, but more in-depth treatment of significant lacunae in the written show more record, would have perhaps been a better approach. show less

British book critic Stuart Kelly took a wonderfully good idea and has turned it into mush. Perhaps it was because my expectations for The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read were so high that I was so disappointed in this book. Kelly's aim is a good one; he writes in the introduction that the book is "an alternative history of literature, an epitaph and a wake, a hypothetical library and an elergy to what might have been." I was looking forward to a fascinating compendium of works of literature that have been lost to history.

What I got instead was what the book perhaps ought to have been titled: The Book of Authors, Some of Whose Works Have been Lost. Kelly focuses far too much on the show more biographical details of the authors he chooses to highlight, and not nearly enough on their lost works. While his sketches of their lives are well-written and quite interesting, there were several occasions where I had to re-read an essay two or three times before I discovered what exactly had gone missing.

This is a good start, and hopefully Kelly's effort will encourage other literary scholars to examine this area of their field more closely. I hope that future endeavors will be better executed. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I really liked the premise of this, but Kelly as a companion got very tiresome. The beginning, in which he talks about Greek and Roman writings that we know existed, is quite good; but as the writers get modern he starts randomly theorizing about what so-and-so might have written had they not died. Well, sure, but that's not my definition of "lost". And it all went to hell for me when he posited, in utter seriousness, that it was not a visitor that interrupted Coleridge in his writing of "Kubla Khan", but a need to masturbate. Kelly seems to be quite sure of this, and I'm always a little turned off by too much conviction regarding dead people's onanism.