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Start giftingThe Library
A Catalogue of Wonders
Narrator
Julian Elfer
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Length
7 hours 57 minutes
Language
English
Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve.
To research this book, Stuart Kells traveled around the world with his young family like modern-day "library tourists." Kells discovered that stories about libraries are stories about people, containing every possible human drama.
The Library is a celebration of books as objects, a celebration of the anthropology and physicality of books and bookish space, and an account of the human side of these hallowed spaces by a leading and passionate bibliophile.
Stuart Kells is an author and book-trade historian. His history of Penguin Books, Penguin and the Lane Brothers, won the prestigious Ashurst Business Literature Prize. He is also the author of Rare, the critically acclaimed biography of Kay Craddock, the first female president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers; and The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders, which has been published around the world in multiple languages.
British-born Julian Elfer is an award-winning New York City-based actor and audiobook narrator with over 100 titles to his credit. Hailed by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for his lead performance in the Mint Theatre Company's A Day by the Sea, Julian brings a unique facility for characterization in fiction and an empathy for the personalities and events of the past.