Portable Magic
By Emma Smith
- Genre
- Art, Culture & Creative Life
- Publisher
- Allen Lane (Penguin UK)
- Publication year
- 2022
- ISBN
- 9780241427262
Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers is a nonfiction book by the Oxford scholar Emma Smith, published by Allen Lane in April 2022. It explores the book as a physical object and its hold on readers across history. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize.
We talk endlessly about the words inside books; Emma Smith wants to talk about the objects themselves. Portable Magic is a history not of literature but of the book as a physical thing - printed, bound, burned, hoarded, defaced, treasured - and of the strange power those objects hold over us. The Oxford Shakespeare scholar ranges from Gutenberg to Kindle, from anthropodermic bindings to Little Free Libraries, from wartime paperbacks to the books people are buried with. Her argument is that 'bookhood,' the physical form, shapes meaning as much as any text. Written with wit and a magpie's delight in odd facts, it is scholarship that reads like a series of after-dinner revelations. intendle recommends it for bibliophiles and anyone who has ever refused to throw a book away. Shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize, it is a love letter to the thing you are, at this moment, holding.