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Robert Lynd (1879-1949), the well known British essayist, was born in Belfast, Ireland. Educated at the Royal Academical Institution and the Queens College, Belfast, Lynd began writing under the pseudonym 'Y.Y! He was a prolific writer who mastered the ironic and satiric modes. Even the very simple topic assumes grandeur when Lynd develops it in his characteristic style. His essays have been published in several volumes of which titles like Pleasures of Ignorance, Life's Little Oddities, The Orange Tree and I Tremble to Think are worth reading.
Robert Lynd belongs to the period of the discursive essayists, when, as against the recent tendency of the feature writers, the author's likes, dislikes and observations flavoured with individual talent came out as enjoyable essays. In this title piece of the collection Pleasures of Ignorance, Lynd takes human memory and the power of observation into consideration. He tries to show that happiness rests apparently on our lack of awareness of many of the simple objects and events around us, because, this leaves us to explore the vast territory of the unknown. The wisdom of Socrates, says Lynd, lies in his finding at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.