Adam Smyth

Repetition and difference!

Thanks z. And yes, the leg work of part one gets rewarded in the end! But just think what it would have been had you performed

I confessed to @adamwithbooks.bsky.social and everyone should watch. Particularly Part 3, which is my favourite.

Confessions (2025) In September 2025, I invited friends and family members to record themselves reading a 20-second passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782).

Confessions (2025) -- a film!

open.substack.com/pub/adamsmyt...

Confessions (2025) In September 2025, I invited friends and family members to record themselves reading a 20-second passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782).

Confessions (2025) -- a film!

open.substack.com/pub/adamsmyt...

The diaries of H____. In 2016, I purchased from eBay for £45 9 volumes of diaries owned by a clinical psychologist practising privately in Berkeley, California.

On reading diaries I probably shouldn't: a short essay.

adamsmyth.substack.com/p/the-diarie...

ordered for Balliol

THIS!

The diaries of H____. In 2016, I purchased from eBay for £45 9 volumes of diaries owned by a clinical psychologist practising privately in Berkeley, California.

On reading diaries I probably shouldn't: a short essay.

adamsmyth.substack.com/p/the-diarie...

A Provincial Market in Second-Hand Books: Book Sales in Devon, 1688–1725 Abstract. Comparatively little is known about England’s early book-auction trade outside of London and the university towns, with few catalogues surviving

*small embarrassed voice*
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...

Slavery as a feature of Roman book culture

This, with @illdottore.bsky.social, will be terrific -- Monday 1st, in London.

ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Looing forward to this --

stonywords.org.uk/adam-smyth

Loved the print-making course I took at inspiring West Dean College, led by wonderful Mary Dalton. Here is my attempt at books on a shelf, through a net of pastness ...
@westdean.ac.uk

Queer Failure and Early Modern Books Adam Smyth ABSTRACT This article brings together bibliography and queer theory to consider the significance of errors in early modern printed books. Particular attention is paid to the errata narratives that appear in many early modern books, explaining the presence of mistakes and often requesting that the reader correct the errors before proceeding. If bibliography has tended to be norm-setting, queer theory provides a corrective, and a more patient critical mode for considering how historians of the book and literary critics might respond to the various kinds of mistakes that were central to early print. The article builds, in particular, from recent critical work on queer bibliography by Malcolm Noble and Sarah Pyke. KEYWORDS: queer bibliography; errors; errata; history of reading; book history; Sarah Pyke; Malcolm Noble

This, by @adamwithbooks.bsky.social in the most recent HLQ, is really excellent. "Bibliography tends to drain out affect—­ but it needn’t."

Thanks Alice! I didn’t know it was iit I the world.

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

‘Gutenberg seems to have had a habit of falling out with people.’

Adam Smyth (@adamwithbooks.bsky.social) on a biography of the printer told through his books.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Preserving unimportant papers The problem of what to do with stuff.

open.substack.com/pub/adamsmyt...

Preserving unimportant papers The problem of what to do with stuff.

open.substack.com/pub/adamsmyt...

Who doesn’t love Good Housekeeping? Especially when they make the Book Game by enigmatic Frances Wise one of the 50 best beach reads *ever*!

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

‘It’s possible that the history of printing is a stitched-together story of the movement of knowledge from East to West, rather as paper-making spread from Asia through the Arab world from the eighth century.’

Adam Smyth (@adamwithbooks.bsky.social) on Gutenberg.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

thank you!

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

‘In focusing on the connection between print and preservation, we miss the culture of ephemeral texts that Gutenberg’s innovation unleashed.’

Adam Smyth on Gutenberg’s books

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

it's my favourite bit of text from the 20th century. i really think it is!

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

‘Centuries of printing preceded Gutenberg. As White is careful to describe, Gutenberg was born nine hundred years after printed texts were first produced in China by rubbing paper onto inked, carved woodblocks.’

Adam Smyth (@adamwithbooks.bsky.social):

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

It’s astonishingly good, isn’t it?

Pronting errors In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Sigmund Freud argues that slips of the tongue and the pen constitute moments when repressed thoughts break through.

open.substack.com/pub/adamsmyt...

Pronting errors In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Sigmund Freud argues that slips of the tongue and the pen constitute moments when repressed thoughts break through.

open.substack.com/pub/adamsmyt...

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

‘Interest in Gutenberg’s Bible waned to such an extent that at least fifteen of them ended up sliced into strips to reinforce more desirable titles – such as a handbook of legal process in Saxony from 1666.’

Adam Smyth (@adamwithbooks.bsky.social) on Gutenberg’s books

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

Pleased to be in the latest @lrb.co.uk with a piece on Eric White's (very good) biography of Mr G's books.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Adam Smyth · Slice It Up: Gutenberg’s Great Invention Gutenberg remains unknowable: an implied but not a felt presence. This is true for all but a small number of 15th-...

Pleased to be in the latest @lrb.co.uk with a piece on Eric White's (very good) biography of Mr G's books.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...