Good Old Index

A New York Times Editors' Choice Book and a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 So Far Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub and Goodreads A playful history of the humble index and its outsized effect on our reading lives. Most of us give little thought to the back of the book—it’s just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and—of course—indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart—and we have been for eight hundred years.

A fascinating collection of information, hitherto unavailable, about the Great Detective and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For example, the Index lists the astonishing variety of weapons employed in the stories: life-preservers (blackjacks), chairs, poison gas, and an arsenal of knives and pistols. You can study Holmes's garb, and the Index facilitates the evaluation of the character of Dr. Watson. Provides abundant material for an assessment of Doyle's writing habits; he was one of the greatest storytellers in English, but could be pompous. Includes thousands of Sherlockian facts into alphabetically arranged categories that allow the reader to find what information instantly.

"Good Old Index is a fascinating collection of information, hitherto unavailable, about the Great Detective and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For example, the Index lists the astonishing variety of weapons employed in the stories - life-preservers (black-jacks), chairs, poison gas, and an arsenal of knives and pistols. Readers can study Holmes's garb, and the Index facilitates the evaluation of the character of Dr. Watson." "It also provides abundant material for an assessment of Doyle's writing habits. He was one of the greatest story-tellers in English, but could be pompous and circumloquacious, as when he calls a sawed-off shotgun a truncated fowling-piece!" "The author has included thousands of Sherlockian facts into alphabetically arranged categories that allow the reader to dip into the book and find what he wants instantly." "This volume fills a unique void in the literature on Doyle and his famous detective."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The critically-acclaimed BBC television series Sherlock (2010- ) re-envisions Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective for the digital age, joining participants in the active traditions of Sherlockians/Holmesians and fans from other communities, including science fiction, media, and anime. This collection explores the cultural intersections and fan traditions that converge in Sherlock and its fandoms. Essays focus on the industrial and cultural contexts of Sherlock's release, on the text of Sherlock as adaptation and transformative work, and on Sherlock's critical and popular reception. The volume's multiple perspectives examine Sherlock Holmes as an international transmedia figure with continued cultural impact, offering insight into not only the BBC series itself, but also into its literary source, and with it, the international resonance of the Victorian detective and his sidekick. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Bell examines the history of the index and the depiction of the indexer (from diffident drudge to frankly insane) in both fact and fiction. A fascinating look at a previously little-considered element of the book.

Patterns of production and consumption are foundation stones of contemporary media studies. Trash Aesthetics takes the audience as its starting point in a collection which explores aspects of audience response, interaction and manipulation.