With the Lobsters into Sea

Professor Christopher Pressler, Manchester University Librarian, and colleagues invited Alberto Manguel to deliver the inaugural John Rylands University of Manchester Lecture, to mark the Library’s 125th anniversary. Introducing the event, Professor Pressler celebrated Manguel’s unique place as a modern man of books, who had inspired his own decision to become a librarian.

Born in Argentina in 1948, Manguel is known for many things: as one of Jorge Luis Borges’s readers from 1964 to 1968, as his eventual successor as director of the National Library of Argentina; as a novelist, essayist, translator, anthologist, editor. Since 2021 his home has been in Lisbon where he directs the international centre for reading studies, named the Espaço Atlântida in 2023.

Among his wonderful books – apart from fiction and essays – are his Dictionary of Imaginary Places (a collaboration with Giani Guadalupi); A History of Reading; The Library by Night; and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey: a biography.

I first came to hear about the John Rylands Library rather late in life thanks to two people and a book. The book was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, whose Hogwarts Library (a review informed me) was inspired by the decor of the Rylands. The two people were, one, Michael Schmidt who, together with Professor Christopher Pressler, rashly issued an invitation to talk to you tonight; and two, library curator Stella Halkyard, whom I hadn’t met until now, but whose magical book of her wanderings through the Rylands archive I had the privilege of introducing. So here I am, feeling honoured ...