Kathryn Hughes
The Sense of a Binding
The evaporation of print over the past five years has left many people feeling swimmy. It’s as if the letters themselves had shaken loose from the page, hovered for a moment and then dissolved into the ether. In the new age of e-reading, text has come to feel so insubstantial that it’s as if a light breeze – or a click of the wrong button – might send it scurrying. The Victorians liked to think of the spirit world in terms of ectoplasm, a wispy, chiffony ribbon that wound its way around table legs and along mantelpieces giving a hint of departed dear ones. And that, I imagine, is how Kindle refusniks see electronic text in this frightening new virtual world – as a spectral echo of its once solid self.
Which is why, of course, the pendulum has swung back the other way. Recently publishers have been straining to emphasise the materiality – the scratch-and-sniff solidity – of their books. Beautiful covers, silk bookmarks and thick creamy paper have all become par for the course, at least when it comes
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
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk