Devil's Details: A History of the Footnote

Title: Devil's Details: A History of the Footnote
Author: Chuck Zerby
Literary Criticism: 1704562
ISBN: 9781931229050
Publisher: Invisible Cities Press LLC
Published: 2001
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Number of Pages: 192
Section: Literary Criticism | Reference
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: This surprising history of the footnote starts with the assumption that footnotes are not solely the province of academics and bibliophiles. On the contrary, this book argues that footnotes can enchant and inform readers through tributes to people, characters, heroes, and lovers. Scholars have employed them, of course, but so have poets, novelists, memorialists, and pornographers. Written with clarity and erudition, this book presents the history of the first genuine footnote--an annotation in a 17th-century poem by England's first female poet--and other fascinating footnote tales, such as the discovery of a multivolume book that uses one entire volume for a single footnote and the use of footnotes to footnotes. This history pays tribute to the joy of reading footnotes and makes a compelling case that they are too important, too interesting, and too entertaining to be left to scholars.