"A 'treated Victorian novel'--treated with humor and poetry, and a feeling for the 'ghosts of other possible stories' lurking in the original text. It may be the closest a paperback book has come to being an art object."--New York

A pseudo-autobiographical exploration of the artistic and cultural impact of the transformation of the print book to its electronic incarnations.

The first definitive overview of typewriter art in decades—with a unique algorithm giving each volume its own cover design The beloved typewriter—its utilitarian beauty, the pleasing percussive action of striking its keys, the singularity of the impressed page—is enjoying a genuine renaissance across the creative industries. In this authoritative publication, the founders of the Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry, the largest such collection in the world, apply their experience, mining the collection they have created over four decades to present examples produced by more than 200 of the world’s finest typewriter artists. From the early ornamental works produced by secretaries in the late nineteenth century to more recent works that consider the unique position of the typewritten document in the digital age, there is an astonishing and delightful range of creativity in every artwork. The Art of Typewriting features three main sections: an introduction to the history of the typewriter and its art; an expansive plate section showing key works rendered in exquisite detail; and a reference section featuring biographies of the genre’s most influential artists and writers. The book’s layout has been created by London’s leading graphic design studio, Graphic Thought Facility, and each book has a cover with a unique combination of front and back image, meaning no two books are the same.

An exquisite art book of gentle and elegant found poetry.

The book as object, as content, as idea, as interface. What is the book in a digital age? Is it a physical object containing pages encased in covers? Is it a portable device that gives us access to entire libraries? The codex, the book as bound paper sheets, emerged around 150 CE. It was preceded by clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. Are those books? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive. Despite nostalgic paeans to the codex and its printed pages, Borsuk reminds us, the term “book” commonly refers to both medium and content. And the medium has proved to be malleable. Rather than pinning our notion of the book to a single form, Borsuk argues, we should remember its long history of transformation. Considering the book as object, content, idea, and interface, she shows that the physical form of the book has always been the site of experimentation and play. Rather than creating a false dichotomy between print and digital media, we should appreciate their continuities.

US scholars of literature explore how illustrated books became a cultural form of great importance in England and Scotland from the 1830s and 1840s to the end of the century. Some of them consider particular authors or editions, but others look at general themes such as illustrations of time, maps and metaphors, literal illustration, and city scenes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR