Edited collections are widely supposed to contain lesser work than scholarly journals; to be incoherent as volumes, no more than the sum of their parts; and to be less visible to potential readers once published. It is also often taken as axiomatic that those who make decisions in relation to hiring, promotion, tenure, and funding do so agree. To publish in or edit an essay collection is thought to risk being penalised for the format before even a word is read. After examining the origins of this critique, this Element explores the modern history of the edited collection and the particular roles it has played. It examines each component part of the critique, showing that they are either largely unfounded or susceptible of solution. It proposes the edited collection as a model of one possible idea of scholarly community: collaboration, trust, and mutual obligation in pursuit of a wider good.

"Will always hold an honorable place for bibliophiles." — The University of Chicago Press One of the earliest treatises on the value of preserving neglected manuscripts, building a library, and book collecting, Richard De Bury's The Philobiblon was written in 1345 and circulated widely in manuscript form for over a century. The first printed edition appeared in Cologne in 1473, and several others soon followed as the invention of the printing press spread throughout the late Medieval world. The chapter titles of this legendary work reflect its nature, combining the author's love for and commitment to the importance of books and the knowledge they contain with thoughts on collecting them, lending them, teaching with them, and simply enjoying them: "That the Treasure of Wisdom is chiefly contained in books," "What we are to think of the price in the buying of books," "Who ought to be special lovers of books," and "Of the manner of lending all our books to students." The Prologue ends with the following thought: "And this treatise (divided into twenty chapters) will clear the love we have had for books from the charge of excess, will expound the purpose of our intense devotion, and will narrate more clearly than light all the circumstances of our undertaking. And because it principally treats of the love of books, we have chose after the fashion of the ancient Romans fondly to name it by a Greek word, Philobiblon." This volume offers modern bibliophiles a splendid edition of one of the first books ever to study, define, and, above all, praise their passion: the all-encompassing love of books.

A Gothic mystery of murder, mutilation, books and skin

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL Novels in Three Lines collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.

An experienced insider in antiquarian book markets offers advice on finding, buying, and selling used and rare books, and provides an index of more than one thousand of the "most collectible" books and authors.

Thoroughly innovative and occasionally irreverent, this book will appeal in equal measure to book historians, Austen fans, and scholars of literary celebrity.