| Vendor | |
|---|---|
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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS
Young Columbus & The Quest for a Universal Library
The thrilling true story of an obsessive book collector the son of Christopher Columbus, in the early era of print
The first English-language biography of Hernando Colon the extraordinary bastard son of Christopher Columbus who spent his life trying to build the first universal library of print. Personally scouring bookshops in an attempt to acquire a copy of every book, he brought them back to his library in Seville, where he drove himself mad attempting to devise how best to navigate and organise the world of print.
Hernando lived in extraordinary times for the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. He knew Erasmus, Duerer and Thomas More, was at the forefront in the first international conference to determine the circumference of the world, led the team that created the first world map on scientific principles and invented
the modern bookcase!
As well as being an astonishing parallel to our own experiences of information overload, his life placed him at the centre of the ages of exploration, print, and the Reformation: he spent a year living with his father marooned aboard a shipwrecked hull off Jamaica and wrote the first biography, Life and Deeds of the Admiral,
printed in Venice thirty years after Christopher Columbus's death (this Italian translation is all that survives; the original Spanish version has never been found).
To reconstruct his life is not only to recover a vision of the Renaissance world in unparalleled complexity, but also to appreciate the passions and intrigues that lie beneath even our own disciplined attempts to bring order to the world. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an unforgettable journey through these complex, layered realities.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature and Shakespeare. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between.
Hernando lived in extraordinary times for the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. He knew Erasmus, Duerer and Thomas More, was at the forefront in the first international conference to determine the circumference of the world, led the team that created the first world map on scientific principles and invented
the modern bookcase!
As well as being an astonishing parallel to our own experiences of information overload, his life placed him at the centre of the ages of exploration, print, and the Reformation: he spent a year living with his father marooned aboard a shipwrecked hull off Jamaica and wrote the first biography, Life and Deeds of the Admiral,
printed in Venice thirty years after Christopher Columbus's death (this Italian translation is all that survives; the original Spanish version has never been found).
To reconstruct his life is not only to recover a vision of the Renaissance world in unparalleled complexity, but also to appreciate the passions and intrigues that lie beneath even our own disciplined attempts to bring order to the world. THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS is an unforgettable journey through these complex, layered realities.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature and Shakespeare. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between.
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Book
Published 2018-05-01 by Collins |