Introduction

By the time you read these opening lines you have already formed an impression of this book and perhaps established certain fundamental truths about it. ese will most likely be challenged or con rmed as you read, but the point remains that you have established them using some textual and some non-textual signi ers. You encounter thresholds with each book you come across: the cover, the picture: what is inscribed on the outside of the volume either in text or in image. ese signi ers lead you to conclusions about genre, audience, relevance and scope, and those conclusions are altered, or con rmed or dismissed, upon delving further into the object.2 In other words, you have rst encountered the material form of the book: you have rst read that materiality, and you read that materiality every time you come into contact with a physical text. is text has a physical reality. e physical, material nature of the text can change (you may be reading this, for instance, on a computer screen), but the materiality of the text always contributes to its meaning. According to Jerome McGann, this is the case ‘whether we are aware of such matters when we make our meanings or whether we are not’.3 e essays in this volume describe this process.