by Dennis Duncan
2021, Penguin Random House
“Index, a history of the” is one of the most brilliant books about books that I know. Who knew that the history of the book index had such a colourful and surprising history? We take for granted the major innovations of the codex (rather than the scroll), alphabetical ordering and page numbering, which are the enabling technologies for the index, but each was a tremendous advance for the access to human knowledge.
The history is told in detail and with the solidity of good scholarship, but presented with wit and colour. Illustrations and quotations are well selected. Some of the pen portraits of leading characters are superbly told, even when the to-and-fro of literary and political rivalries – played out in the humble indexes of contested publications – are dense and subtle. (Oh yes, and it IS “indexes” rather than “indices”, the latter of which the author consigns to mathematics and economics, not the noble art of the book index.) Best of all is (this a revelation to me) the index as literature in itself, capable of carrying a narrative itself, even when the book to which the index refers is fictional or non-existence. Indexes can be works of art, and can be the repository of great jokes and razor-sharp barbs.
chase, wild goose see goose chase, wild
from the Index to “Index, a history of the” by Paula Clarke Bain
Duncan brings the index right into the age of the search engine, with a stark contrast between machine-generated and human-compiled indexes. We have become too used to the computer churning out dumb but exhaustive lists of words or strings, but the human indexer starts with reading and understanding the text and then preparing a list of “headwords” that best reflect the content and argument of the book. A good index can be read as a summary, not just a concordance with page numbers.
goose chase, wild see chase, wild goose
from the Index to “Index, a history of the” by Paula Clarke Bain
Along the journey there are some unforgettable gems: his encounter with the opening page of a small 1470 book of sermons, on which appears the first (ever!) printed page number; via an exploration of the detractors of the humble index who feared the death of scholarship in students reading the index rather than the book itself; the now rare phenomenon of indexing fiction; and a visit to Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street apartment on the way to tracing the idealised concept of The Universal Index, “a key to all knowledge”.
The hardback is a physically beautiful book too, with good clear type, a fine layout and of course an excellent index. A pleasure to read on every level.
Favourite books about books
- Umberto Eco & Jean-Claude Carriere, This is not the end of the book, 2009 / 2012 (Vintage / Random House Books)
- D. C Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction, 1992 / 1994 (Garland Publishing)
- Melvin Bragg, 12 Books That Changed The World: how words and wisdom have shaped our lives, 2006
- Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World, 2016 (Penguin Books)
- Stuart Kelly, The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You Will Never Read, 2012 (Polygon)
Links
- Support Independent Local Bookshops through uk.bookshop.org!
