Book destruction from the medieval to the contemporary

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.

• List of Figures p. vii
• Notes on the Contributors p. ix
• Introduction p. 1 Gill Partington and Adam Smyth
• Part 1 Burning
• 1 Burning Sexual Subjects: Books, Homophobia and the Nazi Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin p. 17 Heike Bauer
• 2 Burning to Read: Ben Jonson's Library Fire of 1623 p. 34 Adam Smyth
• Part 2 Mutilating
• 3 From Books to Skoob; Or, Media Theory with a Circular Saw p. 57 Gill Partington
• 4 'Book Torture': An Interview with Ross Birrell p. 74 Adam Smyth and Gill Partington and Ross Birrell
• Part 3 Doctoring
• 5 Belligerent Literacy, Bookplates and Graffiti: Dorothy Helbarton's Book p. 89 Anthony Bale
• 6 Doctoring Victorian Literature-A Humument: An Interview with Tom Phillips p. 112 Adam Smyth and Gill Partington and Tom Phillips
• Part 4 Degrading
• 7 'Miss Cathy's riven th' back off "Th' Helmet uh Salvation"': Representing Book Destruction in Mid-Victorian Print Culture p. 135 Stephen Colclough
• 8 Waste Matters: Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Nineteenth-Century Book Recycling p. 152 Heather Tilley
• Part 5 Deforming/Reshaping
• 9 The Aesthetics of Book Destruction p. 175 Kate Flint
• 10 Kindle-Recycling and the Future of the Book: An Interview with Nicola Dale p. 190 Adam Smyth and Gill Partington and Nicola Dale
• Select Bioliography p. 208
• Index p. 213