Sunday, January 14, 2007

Alice as Alice saw it...

Wow is the only word to describe the British Library's pageturning facsimiles. I've been looking at William Blake's notebook, and Lewis Carroll's original hand-written/hand-drawn Alice. I've been always a wee bit sceptical of e-Books and the like, but here, for once, is something where the web can genuinely give us an experience, whether at home or in a museum, that wasn't available before. I always love seeing the "behind glass" orginal manuscripts in places like the Haworth parsonage etc. but obviously you never get to feel the book or even to really gaze at what they contain. This is more than "scholarship" - it seems to allow a connection with the very heart of the original writer. More Please!

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