SALON NO.88: London's Lost Books

Reading the City

7.00pm Thursday 28th October 2021

The Salon will be held online via the Zoom platform. Details of how to join will be emailed you before the event.

Admission: Tickets £5.00 in advance only HERE

Join The Wellcome collection's ROSS MACFARLANE and Maggs Brothers' BENJAMIN MAGGS as they turn the pages on lost treasures of the city's literary life..

CREDIT: HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 

Now, I’m sure I left it here somewhere: 

Grab your reading glasses, and follow ROSS MACFARLANE as he sets out to track down a curious collection of books that were lost in London.  

Whether misplaced, misfiled, stolen or destroyed, Ross traces the records of some famous - and infamous – texts.  He’ll journey to libraries, auctioneers and even the bottom of the River Thames on the trail of missing volumes and show that, every so often, lost books can sometimes be found… 

The Haunted Bookshop: Maggs Bros. previous premises at 50 Berkeley Square is widely believed to be ‘the most haunted house in London’, and whilst the company line over its 80 year occupancy was always clear that 'There Is No Ghost!', BENJAMIN MAGGS takes us on a deep dive into the basements of bookshops, where the ghosts of collections past lie in wait for the intrepid cataloguer. 

What can we learn of the collector from what remains of their collection? How much is lost when collections are broken, and how can we reassemble them? Are private collectors guardians or thieves of cultural heritage? 

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ROSS MACFARLANE is Research Development Lead at Wellcome Collection. In his time working in libraries across London he has handled a mermaid, catalogued notes from a seance and rediscovered a lost alchemy manuscript written by Isaac Newton.  On previous occasions he spoken at Salon for the City on such topics as floating hospitals, the history of magic and made the case for Paddington Bear as the greatest Londoner.

BENJAMIN MAGGS the youngest in a line of booksellers. He holds a master’s degree in Book History from the University of London, and has worked for the past seven years with private press, illustrated and artist’s books. In that time, he has handled a complete original collection of the Doves Press, one of only two known copies of the first printed collaboration between Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and recently discovered a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer in a second hand bookshop while touring Northumberland by bicycle.  

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