Around the Text

Books are made up of many elements and which go beyond the body of text that answers to the title on the cover. These aspects are, however, often disregarded by readers and book historians alike but collectively and individually they can provide useful indications about a book’s design, production, purpose, and circulation. Material additions provided by the reader such as inscriptions dedications, bookplates, labels, ex libris, and bookmarks alongside archive stamps and return-date sheets inserted by lending library all provide evidence of when a book was used by whom and how often; they also demonstrate a healthy market in the production of supplementary bibliographical material. In-text or back-of-a-book adverts demonstrate the reach and readership of the volume, the marketing and sales ambitions of the publisher, and the tactics used to establish authority and validity for a publication. Material aspects such as erratum slips produced the printer, printed waste for bindings, and foredge painting give insights into methods of manufacture; whilst the design and layout of aspects such prelims, endmatter and diagrams reveal how a book was intended for use. This volume, therefore, specifically considered those often overlooked, and yet vitally important elements of a book which buttress the central text-block but which exclude the writing and printing of that text. Whilst the material under consideration may be referred to as paratext, this volume eschews literary concepts and the paratextaul theories of Gérard Genette and how paratextual material changes the reading of the text, this volume considers what the material can reveal about methods of design, and manufacture, sales and marketing, and patens of ownership and use.