Buy this book on-line WELLS**, JOHN: : RUDE WORDS: A Discursive History of the London LibraryLONDON.MACMILLAN,1991. ISBN 0333475194.
UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.NFINE/NFINE.No owner inscrptn,but price-clipped dw/dj.
Colour photographic upper wrap; b/w author portrait photograph to rear wrap with minimal shelf-wear and no creases,nicks or tears to edges.Top+fore-edges clean, contents pristine.Blue paper-covered bds (boards) with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/backstrip and plain grey eps.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,ixp+1-240pp [paginated] includes half-title+title-pages,contents list,a b/w isometric plan of the library,4pp b/w contemporary illus/
photographs between pp116/7,sources and an index.
'The accomplished and distinguished,the beautiful,the wise,something of what is best in England,have listened patiently to my rude words.' Thomas Carlyle was describing his audience,who were impelled
by his oratorical skill and colossal powers of persuasion to build his personal
dream,the London Library.Books,like words,
had a mystical significance for Carlyle, and the library he inspired has continued to exert a powerful influence on fashionable literary life in London and beyond.Jane Carlyle complained that the staff were always drunk and the books too dirty to touch;more recently,a prudish librarian wrapped the saucier volumes in brown paper before allowing female assistants to deliver them to members.But the library's lasting charm for writers and readers has been its policy of lending books for more or less indefinite periods from its open shelves where,according to one eccentric reader,books 'literally leap out at you'.
John Wells,actor,comedian and writer, takes a not always reverent look at the one hundred and fifty years' history of this curious,much-loved institution and at the famous writers and mavericks who have gathered in the beautiful old building in St James's Square to browse,gossip,doze and,in the case of one young member,commit suicide.His anniversary history is full of good stories,wittily told,about a place that is less a library and more a way of life.
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