Book 1

Cycling

by Various Authors

Published 5 May 2016
Directly you are in motion you will feel quite helpless, and experience a sensation of being run away with, and it will seem as if the machine were trying to throw you off

The first bicycle was invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the 1890s that the craze really took off. This brought with it the fears, scaremongering, worries and uncertainties that inevitably accompany any new fashion. Women (often unchaperoned and oddly dressed) taking to 'velocipedes'; over-exertion and heart disease; unknown effects on the health and development of the body - these are just some of the fears that haunted the establishment in the late nineteenth century... But with it, of course, came the joy and wonder of 'the easy and agreeable motion' of this thoroughly modern means of locomotion.

Cycling: The Craze of the Hour is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Book 4

Life in a Bustle

by Various Authors

Published 5 May 2016
"Every age has its own special difficulties and dangers. The disease which specially threatens this generation is restlessness, distraction, dissipation of intellectual and moral power. Its consequence is exhaustion and nervous collapse. And its symptom is Hurry"

Life in a Bustle: Advice to Youth is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Book 5

One would hear considerably less of hysteria, of morphine-mania, and of other regrettable characteristics of fin-de-siecle existence, if women were to take to fencing as one of the regular occupations of their day

Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, said in 1896: "No matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks." Women competed in the Olympics for the first time in 1900.

Lady Greville, the editor of The Gentlewoman's Book of Sports, hopes that reading what each female expert sportswoman has written about her particular sport or pastime "may encourage other women, as feminine but more timid, to imitate their achievements, and to acquire a keen zest for and sympathy with outdoor pursuits."

The Gentlewoman's Book of Sports is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Book 10

Hints on Etiquette

by Various Authors

Published 3 November 2016
If these 'hints' save the blush but upon one cheek, or smooth the path into 'society' of only one honest family, the object of the author will be attained

Hints on Etiquette is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Book 11

A Woman's Walks

by Various Authors

Published 3 November 2016
"To anyone of my sex who feels inclined to follow my example and visit Billingsgate Market when it is in full blast, I would recommend the use of Louis XV. heels - the higher the better - in fact, a pair of stilts would not be inappropriate"

From young men seeking outdoor adventure to intrepid ladies of a certain age discovering other cultures, Victorian explorers were starting to develop a more personal kind of travelogue. In A Woman's Walks, Lady Colin Campbell takes us on a voyage of exploration through her inner landscape - as well as through Italy, France, Switzerland, Austro-Hungary, London, and the English countryside.

A Woman's Walks is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Book 12

A colliery explosion, more disastrous than any that can be remembered, took place on Thursday afternoon, the 18th June, 1835

An Account of the Dreadful Explosion in Wallsend Colliery by which 101 Human Beings Perished! is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

Through a Glass Lightly

by Various Authors

Published 3 November 2016
"A drinker's crown of sorrow is remembering wetter days"

The love of drinking was well-developed in the nineteenth-century Englishman. With chapters on port, claret, sherry, champagne, Burgundy, Madeira, wine cellars, glasses and butlers, Through a Glass Lightly is a love letter to wine and everything that came with it. But the passionate tale has a sorry ending: in the final two chapters, the author develops gout and has to become a teetotaller in order to be able to take out life insurance.

Through a Glass Lightly is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

"Never let the heat of action lead you to forget good-temper. Be manly; seek no undue advantage. Science and pluck give advantage enough"

Ned Donnelly, a former prize fighter turned boxing instructor and author (with a lot of help from his literate friends), was a household name as a one of the most successful, famous, and respected instructors in the history of British boxing. This delightful book - more than an instruction manual, more than an amusing pastime - captures the fighting style from a crucial moment in boxing history right after the Prize Ring had become extinct. With a detailed clarity of expression, and accompanied by charming illustrations of a slightly paunchy boxer, it is a fascinating insight to the man who trained George Bernard Shaw.

The Noble English Art of Self-Defence is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

"If you give anything to a Norwegian (old meat tins are always thankfully received), he will give your hand a silent grip more expressive than many words"

The Lure of the North is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

On Corpulence

by Various Authors

Published 5 May 2016
Oh! that the faculty would look deeper into and make themselves better acquainted with the crying evil of obesity - that dreadful tormenting parasite on health and comfort

William Banting, a short man who suffered great personal distress from his increasing fatness, finally happened upon a 'miracle cure'. So great was his relied that he wrote and published A Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public. In singling out sugar and fats as the main cause of obesity, he was remarkably ahead of his time. The tract was an immediate success: thousands took up his diet; there were four editions of his book by 1869; and 'to bant' or 'banting' became a popular phrase for slimming, which lasted well into the twentieth century.

Contains also a small piece by Lewis Carroll on 'feeding the mind', in which he tells us the best way to 'consume' books.

On Corpulence is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

The Right to Fly

by Various Authors

Published 3 November 2016
"If I am dreaming, let me dream on, - but I defy any one to awaken me! - Let me contemplate the air studded with barques travelling with such rapidity as to humiliate the Ocean and all the locomotives of the Earth!"

The first balloon flight with passengers (a sheep, a duck, and a rooster) took place on 19th September 1783. On 4th October 1863, Nadar's giant balloon "Le Geant" had its first ascent; the second (and nearly fatal) was two weeks later.

A curiosity both for its content on theories of flight and its author, an important pioneer of French photography and skilled self-publicist, The Right to Fly indicates the interest taken by many at the time in the possibilities of human flight - and the Victorian passion for discoveries and invention.

The Right to Fly is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.

This little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape of a book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention of the press can anything short of an universal convulsion of nature abolish it

The London Library's members are, by their nature, interested in reading and preserving books. Many of the members have been, and still are today, some of the most impressive writers and thinkers of their time: from Dickens to David Hare, from Alfred Lord Tennyson to Kazuo Ishiguro.

On Reading, Writing and Living with Books collects writing by some of the early members of The London Library: George Eliot, Charles Dickens, EM Forster and Virginia Woolf, among others, write about the joy of living with books.

On Reading, Writing and Living with Books is part of 'Found on the Shelves', published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving and more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners and thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it.