Invisible Library at Reading June 28, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beachcombing pioneered, early in his blogging career, an invisible library tag for books that have never existed save in the imagination of bookophiles: Beachcombing has, in fact, been preparing his own list for the last year for a false door in the family mansion for which readers kindly offered various titles. To keep the tag going he wanted to share a list from, of all places, nineteenth-century Reading.
The great Frank Buckland, recently disassociated with eating Louis XIV’s heart in this place, had visited a Mr Highford Bur of Aldermaston Park, Reading. ‘I got up early to look over the books in the library, always a great treat to me. As I passed down the shelves, I suddenly came to a series of books which, I confess, I had never seen before and the titles of which very much astonished me. The books were admirably placed among the other volumes, so that the deception was complete… While I was still in a state of astonishment, the Squire came into the room, and laughed heartily at the new literary victim he had caught wondering at the backs of the books which formed ‘dummied’ to conceal a door opening out among the book-shelves.’
Anon, Geology of the Moon (2 vols) [This title has driven Beachcombing mad: he has the sense it appears in another invisible library list but has not been able to find it anywhere.]
Anon, History of the Winged Hat of Mercury
Anon, Ministerial Papers during the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (6 vols)
Anon, Plans and Elevations of the Tower of Babel (2 vols)
Anon, Secret Memoirs of the Court of Troy
Anon, Sections of the Trojan Horse
Anon, The Lost Books of the Sybil
Archimedes, The Steam Engine
Belshazzar, On Unknown Characters
Calliope, On Poetry
Demosthenes, Orations on the Sea Shore
Empedocles, On Volcanoes
Hobbs, The Rape of the Lock
Horace, The Salt Mines of Africa
Julius Caesar, Tour in the British Islands
Nero, On the Violin
Noah, Logbook of the Ark
Samson, Fox-Hunting
Solon, Geography of America
Virgil, Farmer’s Manual
At this point FB abdicates all responsibility by writing the most terrible words in Victorian prose ‘&c’. Still Beachcombing would forgive anything if only he could have seen the good naturalist’s bleary eyes opening wide as he stumbled upon Solon’s Geography of America in the early morning light.
Any other invisible libraries? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
