The Book as Instrument

“This is a highly ambitious, original account of Stéphane Mallarmé’s lifelong engagement with the book and the vast network of forces (cultural, aesthetic, political) that both informed this engagement and were transformed by it. Anna Sigrídur Arnar seamlessly brings together divergent areas of inquiry in order to support the idea that the book was and remains a site of numerous debates about democracy, public and private space, the uses of art and print, and the role of authors and readers. The Book as Instrument is elegantly written, in engaging and highly readable prose. Arnar succeeds in presenting and analyzing with remarkable lucidity ideas that many of us have learned to approach as difficult and thus nearly off-limits. This will be an important work of scholarship for a variety of disciplines.”

“Arnar convincingly argues that [Mallarmé] both informed, and was informed by, the transformation of printmaking and book culture to a much greater extent than has been previously acknowledged. . . . Provides a unified and more authentic view of fin-de-siècle culture.”

“This is a significant and substantial book about a figure of major importance in the history of avant-garde poetry, culture, and the arts. Combining substantive research with highly refined and original arguments about Mallarmé’s work and its relationship to mass culture, The Book as Instrument expertly discusses how book culture came into being in fin-de-siècle France. Filled with rock-solid scholarship, Anna Sigrídur Arnar’s analysis uncovers in lucid, descriptive prose a cultural history that has long been bracketed out of most discussions. Delightful, engaging, and impressive, this book will be important to literary scholars, art historians, and students of book history alike.”