John Sutherland
Biblomania
The Oxford Companion to the Book
By Michael F Suarez, S J and H R Woudhuysen
If there were a prize for the handsomest book of the month, this cased, pictorially end-leaved, elegantly bound, gilt-embossed, generously illustrated double-decker, finely printed on coated paper, would win. One’s fingers positively itch to turn its pages.
It is, one is tempted to say, almost worth the wallet-shrivelling sum that OUP is charging for the two-volume package – an amount that none but bibliophiles teetering on the verge of bibliomania will happily part with.
At some three kilos this is probably also the heaviest title of the season. When I called round at the Literary Review to pick it up some wag in the office jested that a free rupture truss ought to be included in the price.
‘Book History’ is
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The trick of a successful mercenary ... was somehow to get on almost as well with your enemies as your allies, since those two positions could be reversed at dizzying speed.'
Sarah Dunant on the life of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/scholar-in-arms
'McDormand has come closer to Lady Macbeth in some of her previous grimly comic performances ... Here she can convey only the banality of evil, as when she fussily curtails the banquet after Macbeth’s hallucination.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/come-thick-night
'"Extinct" comprises eighty-five essays on defunct objects, from arsenic wallpaper to the Zeppelin. The format does not immediately inspire confidence ... but "Extinct" turns out to be more satisfying than one might expect.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ode-to-an-ashtray