In an age when out-takes from Big Brother are saved, it's sobering to realize that some of the world's greatest prose and poetry has gone missing. This witty, wry and unique book rectifies that wrong. Part detective story, part history lesson, part expose, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature's what-ifs and never weres. Here, Stuart Kelly reveals the tantalizingly absent works of the famous, the acclaimed and the influential. Was Shakespeare's Love's Labours Won, a sequel to Love's Labours Lost - or just an alternative title for The Taming of the Shrew? And what was the monstrous secret contained in Lord Byron's Memoirs that caused his publisher to burn the manuscript...Civilized and satirical, erudite yet accessible, The Book of Lost Books tells the fascinating true stories behind the books that can exist only in our imagination.