Reading Room: A Year of Literary Curiosities

Prepare to lose yourself among the shelves of the British Library, from the fiction of popular writers such as George Orwell and Muriel Spark, to the rallying cry of Emmeline Pankhurst, to the psychoanalytical mind of Carl Jung.

With an extract for every day of the year, each one accompanied by the unique shelfmark number of its source, Reading Room makes space for the often overlooked joy of literary discoveries. Readers will delight in great works of fiction, poetry, essays and letters, as well as historical and scientific treatises. This playful and provocative collection extends reading lists everywhere from the expected and familiar into a wilderness of ephemera curated over centuries.

Beautifully illustrated with artwork from the British Library's collections, this book can be read as a thought to start each day, or dipped into for inspiration at random.

Includes extracts from: Joseph Conrad: The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions
Sigmund Freud: 'The Interpretations of Dreams'
Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique
David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature
Plato: The Republic
Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition
Jane Austen: letter to Cassandra Austen, 17/18 Oct. 1815
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
George Orwell: The English People
Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

With an extract for every day of the year, each one accompanied by the unique shelfmark number of its source, Reading Room makes space for the often overlooked joy of literary discoveries. Readers will delight in great works of fiction, poetry, essays and letters, as well as historical and scientific treatises. This playful and provocative collection extends reading lists everywhere from the expected and familiar into a wilderness of ephemera curated over centuries.