Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3

This is a cabinet of intellectual wonders. Isaac D'Israeli, the eminent Victorian scholar and father of future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, assembled these essays over decades of obsessive reading in private libraries. The third volume continues his pursuit of literary curiosities, historical oddities, and the forgotten customs that shaped English society. Here you will find essays on the origins of book titles, the strange histories of famous manuscripts, the eccentricities of authors, and the social rituals that governed literary life in centuries past. D'Israeli writes with the verve of a man who has discovered something wonderful and cannot wait to tell you about it. His scholarship is formidable but never dry, his anecdotes always aimed at delighting as much as instructing. For readers who crave knowledge that mainstream histories overlook, who want to understand how literature actually lived and breathed in earlier centuries, this volume offers boundless treasure. It is a book for the incurably curious.