Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary

by G. Partington (Editor), A. Smyth (Editor)

Overview

This rich and varied collection of essays by scholars and interviews with artists approaches the fraught topic of book destruction from a new angle, setting out an alternative history of the cutting, burning, pulping, defacing and tearing of books from the medieval period to our own age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349474554
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2014
Series:	New Directions in Book History
Edition description:	1st ed. 2014
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Anthony Bale, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Heike Bauer, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Ross Birrell, Glasgow School of Arts, Scotland Stephen Colclough, Bangor University, Wales Nicola Dale, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Kate Flint, University of Southern California, USA Tom Philips, artist, UK Adam Smyth, Balliol College, Oxford, UK Heather Tilley, independent scholar, UK

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Notes on the contributors Introduction; Adam Smyth and Gill Partington PART I: BURNING 1. Burning Sex Subjects: Books, Homophobia and the Nazi Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin; Heike Bauer 2. Burning to Read: Ben Jonson's Library Fire of 1623; Adam Smyth PART II: MUTILATING 3. From Books to Skoob; Or, Media Theory with a Circular Saw; Gill Partington 4. The Complete Works of Franz Kafka Burned [interview]; Ross Birrell PART III: DOCTORING 5. Belligerent Literacy, Bookplates, and Graffiti: Dorothy Helbarton's Book; Anthony Bale 6. Doctoring Victorian Literature: A Humument [interview]; Tom Phillips PART IV: DEGRADING 7. 'Miss Cathy's riven th' back off 'Th' Helmet uh Salvation'': Representing Book Destruction in Mid-Victorian Print Culture; Stephen Colclough 8. Waste Matters: Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Nineteenth-Century Book Recycling; Heather Tilley PART V: DEFORMING/RESHAPING 9. Aesthetics of Book Destruction; Kate Flint 10.Kindle : Recyling and the future of the book [interview]; Nicola Dale Bibliography Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This lively book helps inaugurate Palgrave’s series New Directions in Book History, the raison d’être of which is to publish “monographs that employ advanced methods and open up new frontiers in research” (i) ... there is much to admire and enjoy in this collection, the quirkiness and scholarliness of which bode well for future volumes in the series.” (Jonathan Gibson, The Open University, UK)