Book & podcast collection

Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers 

byEmma Smith

Emma Smith tells the history of books as physical objects that readers carry, mark, exchange, hide, damage, collect, and transform. From scrolls and manuscripts to printed volumes and digital anxieties, she examines how format shapes meaning and how ownership differs from reading. Marginal notes, bindings, libraries, censorship, theft, and destruction reveal books participating in social life rather than sitting passively on shelves. Smith's literary history celebrates the portability and material strangeness of books, showing that their power lies not only in contained words but in the relationships and actions they make possible.

Publisher

Knopf

Publication date

Nov 15, 2022

Format

Print edition

Pages

352

ISBN

9781524749095