First Scribner hardcover edition.

401 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm

text txt rdacontent

unmediated n rdamedia

volume nc rdacarrier

"Originally published in Great Britain in 2018 by William Collins"-- Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-375) and index.

Prologue: Seville, 12 July 1539 -- The sorcerer's apprentice. The return from Ocean ; In the chamber of clean blood ; The book of prophecies ; Rites of passage ; A knowledge of night -- A language of pictures. Shoes & ships & sealing wax ; The world city ; The architecture of order ; An empire of dictionaries -- An atlas of the world. The devil in the details ; No place like home ; Cutting through ; The library without walls -- Settings things in order. Another Europe and the same ; The King of Nowhere ; Last orders -- Epilogue: Ideas on the shelf.

While his father sailed across the ocean to explore the boundaries of the known world, Hernando Colón sought to surpass Columbus's achievements by building a library that would include "all books, in all languages and on all subjects." He spent his life travelling-- first to the New World with his father in 1502, surviving through shipwreck and a bloody mutiny off the coast of Jamaica, and later, throughout Europe, amassing a collection based on the modern conviction that a truly great library should include the kind of material dismissed as ephemeral trash: ballads, pornography, newsletters, popular images, romances, fables. Using an invented system of hieroglyphs he meticulously catalogued every item in his library, devising the first ever search engine for his rich profusion of books and images and music. Wilson-Lee tells of the life and times of this first genius of the print age. -- adapted from Amazon.com

Colón, Fernando, 1488-1539.

Biblioteca Colombina.

Book collectors -- Spain -- Biography.

Historians -- Spain -- Biography.

Bibliographers -- Spain -- Biography.

Geographers -- Spain -- Biography.

Biography.

Catalog of shipwrecked books

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1982111399 (hardback)

9781982111397 (hardback)