Will Ashford's Recycled Words

Will Ashford is another creative biblioclast: an artist who rescues, salvages, and recycles books. On his web site, Ashford explains:

Browsing through garage sales, street markets and used bookstores I search for interesting, preferably discarded, old books. When I find a good candidate I explore every page. Like an archeologist I hunt for the words that speak to me with new meaning. Intuitively, one word at a time, they turn into a kind of haiku or philosophical poetry that I can call my own.

At some unpredictable point along the way, in my mind, the images start to invent themselves. Using colored vellums, graphite and or India ink to highlight or obscure my words; I create the image of that invention. Though I strive to make each document visually engaging I find it is the words that I value most.

Richard D. Altick (1915–2008)

Richard D. Altick, Professor of English at Ohio State University from 1945 to 1982, died (ætat 92) on 8 February 2008. Prof. Altick's The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 (1957) remains one of the most significant contributions to the study of Book History and Print Cultures in the English-speaking world. The following obituary was distributed by David A. Brewer on the SHARP Listserver on 9 February 2008.

Professor Altick, who was the only faculty member in the Department to be honored with the title of Regents Professor, published a number of books of wide interest and of great influence, including The Scholar Adventurers (1950), The Art of Literary Research (1963), and A Preface to Critical Reading (1949 and 1969). He was an eminent scholar of Victorian studies: among his many other books, to mention only a few, were The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 (1957), Browning's Roman Murder Story: A Reading of The Ring & The Book (1968; with James Loucks), Lives and Letters:. A History of Literary Biography in England and America (1969), Victorian Studies in Scarlet: Murders and Manners in the Age of Victoria (1970), The Shows of London: A Panoramic History of Exhibitions, 1699-1862 (1978), Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature (1980), and Paintings from Books: Art and Literature in Britain 1760-1900 (1985). He also frequently wrote essay-reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books.