Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost, & Where Did it Go?
Works of art disappear, species are extinguished, books are lost, cities drown, things once thought immortal suddenly aren’t there at all. Whole libraries of knowledge, and whole galleries of secrets are gone. Our culture, our knowledge, and all our lives are shadows cast by what went before. We are defined, not by what we have, but by what we have lost along the way. Lost Worlds is a glossary of the missing, a cabinet of absent curiosities. No mere miscellany, it weaves a web of everything we no longer have. Michael Bywater, "Lost Worlds" columnist for the Independent on Sunday, teaches at Cambridge University.
They go. They vanish. People. Civilizations. Languages. Philosophies. Works of art disappear, species are extinguished, books are lost. Dunwich is drowned, Pompeii buried, Athena's statue gone from the Parthenon, Suetonius's Lives of the Great Whores gone the way of the Roman Empire. Whole libraries of knowledge, galleries of secrets. Gone. Little things, too. Train compartments. Snuff, galoshes, smog. Your mother's perfume. Our culture, our knowledge and all our lives are shadows cast by what went before. We are defined not by what we have but by what we have lost along the way. And so, Lost Worlds: a glossary of the missing, a cabinet of absent curiosities, weaving a web of everything we no longer have. Lost Worlds: the book the book that falls open at every page.
*Page edges yellowed.*
| Author | Michael Bywater |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Granta Books |
| Place | London |
| Year | 2005 |
| ISBN | 9781862077010 |
| Binding | Hardcover |
| Condition | Very Good |
| Dustjacket Condition | Very Good |
| Comments | Page edges yellowed. |
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