Synopses & Reviews
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 footnotean annotation in a 17th-century poem by Englands first female poetand 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.
Review
“A wonderful little treasure of learning, lightness and literary history . . . Invaluable to any and all who love the word, wit, and the world.” —
Kirkus Reviews, starred review, October 2001
Review
“Zerby mounts a spirited defense of a little-loved and endangered species.” —
Boston Sunday GlobeReview
“[Zerby] offers an exhastive history of his subject, which includes such luminaries as Edward Gibbon, who devoted one-quarter of the space in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to footnotes. Zerby gladly follows his example, squeezing footnotes onto virtually every page of his book, including the cover. These annotations are, in fact, the best part of the book—hilarious, illuminating, opinionated and wide-ranging.” —BookPage
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
About the Author
Chuck Zerby has written for the
New York Times, Womans Day, the
History of Education Quarterly, and the
Amherst Record. He lives in Hadley, Massachusetts.