The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Edward Wilson-Lee 2018

Cover illustration by Joe McLaren

Edward Wilson-Lee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008146221

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008146238

Version: 2018-05-04

Dedication

for Kelcey

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Epigraph

Prologue: Seville, 12 July 1539

PART I: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

I. The Return from Ocean

II. In the Chamber of Clean Blood

III. The Book of Prophecies

IV. Rites of Passage

V. A Knowledge of Night

PART II: A LANGUAGE OF PICTURES

VI. Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

VII. The World City

VIII. The Architecture of Order

IX. An Empire of Dictionaries

PART III: AN ATLAS OF THE WORLD

X. The Devil in the Details

XI. No Place Like Home

XII. Cutting Through

XIII. The Library Without Walls

PART IV: SETTING THINGS IN ORDER

XIV. Another Europe and the Same

XV. The King of Nowhere

XVI. Last Orders

XVII. Epilogue: Ideas on the Shelf

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Life and Deeds of the Admiral

Notes on Sources

Picture Section

List of Illustrations

Index

Also by Edward Wilson-Lee

About the Author

About the Publisher

Maps

The route of Columbus’ Fourth Voyage, 1502–4, on which he was accompanied by Hernando.

Detail of Hernando and Columbus’ route around the Caribbean and Central America in 1502–4.

The route of Hernando’s journey through Europe in 1520–2; the dashed portions are conjectured.

The route of Hernando’s journey through Europe in 1529–31; the dashed portions are conjectured.

Epigraph

Achilles’ shield is therefore the epiphany of Form, of the way in which art manages to construct harmonious representations that establish an order, a hierarchy … Homer was able to construct (imagine) a closed form because he … knew the world he talked about, he knew its laws, causes and effects, and this is why he was able to give it a form. There is, however, another mode of artistic representation, i.e., when we do not know the boundaries of what we wish to portray, when we do not know how many things we are talking about and presume their number to be, if not infinite, then at least astronomically large … The infinity of aesthetics is a sensation that follows from the finite and perfect completeness of the thing we admire, while the other form of representation we are talking about suggests infinity almost physically, because in fact it does not end, nor does it conclude in form. We shall call this representative mode the list, or catalogue.

UMBERTO ECO, The Infinity of Lists

Como todos los hombres de la Biblioteca, he viajado en mi juventud; he peregrinado en busca de un libro, acaso del catálogo de catálogos; ahora que mis ojos casi no pueden descifrar lo que escribo, me preparo a morir a unas pocas leguas del hexágono en que nací.

JORGE LUIS BORGES, ‘El Biblioteca de Babel’

The use of letters was invented for the sake of remembering things, which are bound by letters lest they slip away into oblivion.

ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, Etymologies I.iii

So if the invention of the Shippe was thought so noble, which carryeth riches, and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits: how much more are letters to be magnified, which as Shippes, passe through the vast Seas of time, and make ages so distant, to participate of the wisdome, illuminations, and inventions the one of the other?

FRANCIS BACON, Advancement of Learning

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