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Publication date: November 2023

Paperback – 160 x 85 mm – 118 pages

Over 120 historic printers' decorations and fleurons

ISBN 9781843682424

A collection of absurdities, many online, gleefully collected by the editor and bibliophile Jim McCue, best known for his edition (with Christopher Ricks) of Eliot’s poetry. Elegantly presented and an ideal small present. Also see: Postings 2.

While working as an editor for The Times (“a once-great newspaper”), Jim McCue wrote the bibliomane column about collecting books. His private imprint the Foundling Press published uncollected writing by William Empson, A. E. Housman, Ben Jonson, Henry James and others. Together with Christopher Ricks, he spent the best part of a decade editing The Poems of T. S. Eliot, which was Book of the Year for 2015 in the Times Literary Supplement and won three international prizes. His attempts to edit the internet have proved less successful, and he was stung when it sent him a message saying he had “no discernible influence”. He is a member of the Half-Crown Club of book-collectors instead, and runs a Shakespeare zoom group which is reading through the First Folio for the second time.