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.