The Bridport Literary Festival 2018

Edward Wilson-Lee’s tells the story of Christopher Columbus’ bastard son, Hernando, who sought to surpass his father’s achievements by creating a universal library. Harnessing the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the world’s knowledge in one place, Hernando saw how the scale of information would change the landscape of thought. Creating a dictionary and geographical encyclopaedia of Spain, he helped to make the first modern maps of the world and accumulated a huge collection of printed music of the age and amassed the greatest private library of 15,000 books.