The Book Blinders

Annals of Vandalism at the British Library: A necrology. The British Library policy from its inception had

invariantly stripped all cover matter from every volume it accessioned. As a result, almost no

hardbound book accessioned by the Library after the middle of the nineteenth century

was in fact presentable in a visual context: no dust-jacket artwork survived to brighten

the theatre of the book; no flap copy to articulate the rituals of expectation and entry

that coded successive unveilings of this transgressive literature.