Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary

"This lively book helps inaugurate Palgrave's series New Directions in Book History, the raison d'etre 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)

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.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.