Gill Partington

My piece in the LRB (16 February 2023) about Annette Gilbert and Johanna Drucker, artists' books, the origins of the alphabet and the untamed peripheries of literature. 

​

In the TLS (October 2022) on the final book that artist Tom Phillips published before his death. It's called Humbert:  part diary, part erased poetry, and a mysterious, fragmentary thing.

For the London Review of Books, (1 April 2021) I wrote about Ubuweb, Kenneth Goldsmith's shennannigans and the online avant garde. The article was published in translation in Die Merkur (June 2021).

The empty page is never empty. For Public Books I wrote about getting up close and personal with paper, and the surprising things you can find in it. 

Book are sometimes made to be played with as much as read. On the vareities of the Victorian movable book in the TLS.

A canter through Leah Price and Matt Rubery's excellent collection, Further Reading in the TLS.

​

Close but no cigar. I wrote about trying to solve Cain's Jawbone, a puzzle cum novel, for the Literary Review and then again for the LRB Blog.

Artist Steve Emmerson sent me some of his pill poems through the post. I didn't take any, but I did write about them. 

In the first lockdown, I wrote about library books as sources of infection and tried to measure a Hilary Mantel novel in square metres. 

In the LRB Blog on the many uses of the blank page in film, literature, and politics, via Jean Luc Godard and Donald Trump.

Easily the second weirdest thing I've had through the mail: dp houston's unreadable poetry, which is a right old can of worms.

Christina Lupton's Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century', reviewed for the LA Review of Books.

All about eighteenth century HTML and this ingenious artists book by Nicholas D. Nace.

​

Missing the last train back from Rotterdam was worth it because I got to review this Alejandro Cesarco Exhibition.

A review for the TLS about early typography and incunables.

​

​

Juliet Fleming's Cultural Graphology reviewed for the TLS.

​

​

Weird formats, hidden compartments, binding and disbinding: a TLS bibliography piece on the book as a strange and deceptive box of tricks.

Antiquarian books and artist's books at the Frieze Masters Exhibition reviewed for TLS First Person.

​

A TLS piece reviewing Fantasies of the Library, a collection of art and essays about odd bookspaces.

A voyage round the artists book with the ever entertaining Michael Hampton.

Review of Elisabeth Tonnard's Invisible Book. It definitely exists, you just can't see it.

Book art, reading and an eye-opening trip to the Meermanno museum in The Hague. I wrote this piece for the LRB blog.

John Latham's Skoob works are v. strange and definitely NSFL (not safe for librarians). I wrote about them for the TLS First Person column.

“Tom Phillips: An Interview”, London Review of Books (October 2012, with Adam Smyth).

​