Devil's Details : A History of the Footnotes

A charming, witty history & exploration of the formal written aside. The dominance by footnotes of 18th- & 19th-cent. lit. & scholarship was both hard-won & doomed, as it led to belittlement in the 20th cent. Playfully explores footnotes' long & illustrious history & makes a clarion call to save them from the new world of the Internet & hypertext. Examines traditional footnotes & their less-buttoned-down incarnations, as used by pornographers. Yes, this book is full of surprises: Zerby hunts down the first bona fide fully functioning footnote; unearths a multi-vol. history of Northumberland, U.K., that uses one vol. for a single footnote; & uncovers a murder plot. Carefully researched & highly opinionated, this vol. includes colorful examples of footnotes.Zerby, Chuck is the author of 'Devil's Details : A History of the Footnotes', published 2005 under ISBN 9780756792954 and ISBN 0756792959.