The Secret Library by Oliver Tearle

 

The Secret Library by Oliver Tearle.

Published 29th September 2016 by Michael O'Mara.

From the cover of the book:

How much do you know about the Victorian novelist who outsold Dickens? Or the woman who became the first published poet in America? Do you know what connects Homer’s Iliad to Aesop’s Fables?

The Secret Library explores these intriguing morsels of lesser-known history, along with the familiar literary heavyweights we know and love. Bringing together an eclectic literary mix of novels, plays, travel books, science books and joke books, author Oliver Tearle explores how the history of the Western World has intersected with all kinds of books over the last 3,000 years.

Delve into this treasure trove of curious literary examples to learn how our history and books are inextricably linked.

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Do you enjoy books about books? I love them. So when I came across The Secret Library by Oliver Tearle, which promised a journey through the curiosities of literature for the book lover, I was intrigued. 

Within these pages, Tearle takes you through the history of the book and its importance in Western Civilisation, beginning with a witty introduction and sweeping through different ages from the Classical World to Modern times. For each era. he picks out fascinating examples of both famous, and lesser known, authors and their works, and talks about their significance in shaping books into the form we are familiar with today - and busts some pretty big myths about literature (and literature adjacent subjects) too.

This might sound a bit dry, but Tearle's writing style makes this a highly engaging non-fiction glimpse into literary history, as it is packed to the gills with the kind of humour that makes you laugh out loud, and is a veritable treasure trove of book themed trivia. You will find yourself constantly saying 'did you know that...?' to whoever is within listening distance while you lap up the information in this book. It proved to be a great conversation starter in my family, and sent us all down a warren full of rabbit holes about some of the things that Tearle reveals - frequently accompanied by much hilarity!

I thoroughly enjoyed dipping into this enlightening little gem. It would make a lovely gift for the book (and trivia) lovers in your life too!

The Secret Library is available to buy now in paperback, ebook, and audio formats.

Thank you to Michael O'Mara and Rachel Quinn Marketing for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Oliver Tearle is a lecturer in English at Loughborough University (UK), where he completed a PhD (in 2010) and has taught for the last seven years, having also taught at the University of Warwick.

He runs the blog Interesting Literature: A Library of Literary Interestingness, which gets 1.5 million views a month and has a weekly feature where he reveals a little-known work of literature. The blog also has an accompanying Facebook page and Twitter feed, the latter of which is followed by, among many others, the makers of the television series QI, the Oxford English Dictionary, the British Library, the British Museum, the Times Literary Supplement, and numerous comedians, writers, academics, journalists, politicians, and celebrities.

Oliver is the author of two academic books, Bewilderments of Vision: Hallucination and Literature, 1880–1914 (Sussex, 2013) and T. E. Hulme and Modernism (Bloomsbury, paperback edition 2015), as well as the co-editor of an experimental volume of critical and creative pieces, Crrritic! (Sussex, 2011). His proudest achievement is coining the word 'bibliosmia' to describe the smell of old books.