Stuart Kelly

the man who invented a nation

Scott-land

A history of world literature showcases authors whose books have been missing, destroyed, or left unfinished, describing works that have been lost by such authors as Euripides, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Sylvia Plath.

An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read

The Book of Lost Books

Beginning with the earliest hominids, 'The Book of Lost Books' traces various pieces of literature which, for a variety of reasons, cannot be read. Each entry describes the reasons for the loss - it may have been destroyed, or left incomplete at the time of the author's death.

Can a self-confessed murderer become a priest? What would the church - or the bible - say about that? And what if his crime was a most unusual crime indeed...

A Book of Aftermaths

The Minister and the Murderer

Walter Scott

A party on the Highland Tour comes upon a miserable hut hidden away among a patch of cliffs. Upon inquiring about what lies before them, the ladies hear the wretched tale of Elspat MacTavish, the Highland Widow, who is condemned forever to live penitent and alone. After the suppression of the Highland clans, the widow’s son, Hamish, sets off with honorable intentions of joining the coalition on its campaign against the French into America. But soon the unfortunate Hamish finds himself tricked by his own mother. The ensuing events produce a tragic ending made all the more pathetic by the unquenchable passion of a once-proud nation that continues to beat in the breast of one woman.

The Highland Widow

In an age when deleted scenes from Adam Sandler movies are saved, it’s sobering to realize that some of the world’s greatest prose and poetry has gone missing. This witty, wry, and unique new book rectifies that wrong. Part detective story, part history lesson, part exposé, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature’s what-ifs and never-weres. In compulsively readable fashion, Stuart Kelly reveals details about tantalizing vanished works by the famous, the acclaimed, and the influential, from the time of cave drawings to the late twentieth century. Here are the true stories behind stories, poems, and plays that now exist only in imagination: ·Aristophanes’ Heracles, the Stage Manager was one of the playwright’s several spoofs that disappeared. ·Love’s Labours Won may have been a sequel to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost–or was it just an alternative title for The Taming of the Shrew? ·Jane Austen’s incomplete novel Sanditon, was a critique of hypochondriacs and cures started when the author was fatally ill. ·Nikolai Gogol burned the second half of Dead Souls after a religious conversion convinced him that literature was paganism. ·Some of the thousand pages of William Burroughs’s original Naked Lunch were stolen and sold on the street by Algerian street boys. ·Sylvia Plath’s widower, Ted Hughes, claimed that the 130 pages of her second novel, perhaps based on their marriage, were lost after her death. Whether destroyed (Socrates’ versions of Aesop’s Fables), misplaced (Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine was pinched from his publisher’s car), interrupted by the author’s death (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston), or simply never begun (Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, America, a second volume of his memoirs), these missing links create a history of literature for a parallel world. Civilized and satirical, erudite yet accessible, The Book of Lost Books is itself a find.

'A smart, refreshingly uncynical book' - Iain Finlayson, The Times 'A lovely piece of work -- the best book on Scott, indeed, since Edwin Muir's Scott and Scotland' - Andrew O'Hagan 'This is no dry history' - The Skinny 'Very engaging, highly intelligent ... I loved this book and heartily recommend it' - AN Wilson His name and image are everywhere - from Bank of Scotland fivers to the monument in Edinburgh's city centre - yet who reads Walter Scott these days? Stuart Kelly explores the enigma of Scott and the disparity between his influence and his status, his current standing and his cultural legacy, in a voyage around Scotland. Born in Edinburgh, the ninth child of a lawyer, Scott trained as a lawyer. After the phenomenal success of his novel Waverley (1814) he produced a string of novels, such as Rob Roy, Guy Mannering, Ivanhoe, Old Mortality and The Talisman. Scott's writing strongly influenced, among others, Emily Bronte and Alexandre Dumas, although Mark Twain loathed it; he named a sinking boat, The Walter Scot in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Scott's management of his financial affairs left much to be desired and he was an extravagant spender on his house in Abbotsford and historical artefacts. He found himself in debt in 1826 to the tune of ?100,000 and attempted to write himself out of it. By the time of his death in 1832 he had cleared ?70,000.

Stuart Kelly

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