Dennis Duncan is a writer and translator based in London. He is currently writing a history of the book index, from the medieval period to the age of the Kindle, to be published by Penguin in 2020, and is author of The Oulipo and Modern Thought (Oxford University Press, 2019). His recent articles have considered Mallarme and jugs, James Joyce and pornography, and the history of the Times New Roman typeface. Dr Duncan writes on bibliography and French literature for the Times Literary Supplement, and has published translations of Michel Foucault, Boris Vian, and Alfred Jarry. Adam Smyth is Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford. His most recent books include Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010); A History of English Autobiography (edited, Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (edited with Gill Partington, Palgrave, 2014). He is the co-editor of Routledge's book series Material Readings in Early Modern Culture. He also enjoys discussing his work beyond the academy: he writes regularly for the London Review of Books, and has appeared on TV and radio in the UK and abroad. Adam Smyth is the co-host of the literary discussion podcast and radio show, Litbits.
an engaging work of book history as anatomy ... each of the contributors to Book Parts finds their own metaphorical vocabulary to describe the relationship between book part and main text. * James Waddell, Times Literary Supplement * Duncan and Smyth contextualize their undertaking with an unusually self-conscious introduction that does not spend time giving us synopses of each chapter ... There is little need to speak of the whole collection when it is this well edited and each part feels in concert with the others ... It is the drama of this shadowy realm that Smyth and Duncan's collection, both in whole and in part, demonstrates for us. * Nicholas D. Nace, The Book Collector *