The Pleasures of Ignorance by Robert Lynd

Ref: CCB-TPI
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Published by Grant Richards Ltd. This edition printed in September 1921 by Riverside Press Limited, Edinburgh. Handwritten inscription inside front cover reads “Edith C. Barker, Christmas 1921”. Book in good condition. Robert Wilson Lynd (1879 - 1949) was an Irish writer, an urbane literary essayist and strong Irish nationalist. This small extract will give you a taste of this wonderful book - “It is impossible to take a walk in the country with an average townsman - especially, perhaps, in April or May - without being amazed at the vast continent of his ignorance. It is impossible to take a walk in the country oneself without being amazed at the vast continent of one's own ignorance. Thousands of men and women live and die without knowing the difference between a beech and an elm, between the song of a thrush and the song of a blackbird. Probably in a modern city the man who can distinguish between a thrush's and a blackbird's song is the exception. It is not that we have not seen the birds. It is simply that we have not noticed them. We have been surrounded by birds all our lives, yet so feeble is our observation that many of us could not tell whether or not the chaffinch sings, or the colour of the cuckoo. We argue like small boys as to whether the cuckoo always sings as he flies or sometimes in the branches of a tree”. In a world which is full of technological advancement and achievement, this book is a real joy and shows us how little we really know about the things that actually matter.

Format: Hardback
ISBN: CCB-TPI
Postage & Packing: FREE