Idle Hours In A Library

The pleasure of aimless wandering through a library, elevated to art. William Henry Hudson, the celebrated author of Green Mansions and a devoted naturalist, turns his keen observer's eye from birds and landscapes to the printed page. These essays on Shakespeare, Pepys, Restoration novels, and the peculiar magnetism of bohemian life were never meant to be scholarship. They are the happy accidents of a mind that wandered into the stacks not to find anything specific, but to be found by whatever caught his attention. Written with warmth and without a trace of academic stiffness, this is a book that celebrates the private, almost secret joy of reading. For anyone who has ever gotten lost in a library on purpose.