A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, Fourth Edition [Paperback]

Tom Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2005

In the mid-1960s, Tom Phillips took a forgotten nineteenth-century novel, W. H. Mallock's A Human Document, and began cutting and pasting the extant text to create something new. The artist writes, 'I plundered, mined and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophes which seemed to lurk within its wall of words. As I worked on it, I replaced the text I'd stripped away with visual images of all kinds. I began to tell and depict, among other memories, dreams and reflections, the sad story of Bill Toge, one of love's casualties.' After its first publication in book form in 1980, A Humument rapidly became a cult classic. This new fourth edition follows its predecessors by incorporating revisions and re-workings -- over half the pages in the 1980 edition are replaced by new versions -- and celebrates an artistic enterprise that is nearly forty years old and still actively a work in progress.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A visual adventure, a peculiar space where the reader-spectator is invited to speculate on the meaning of words and images. -- ARTnews

A wonderful entertainment...full of humor, visual invention, and the peculiar poignancy of unnoticed meanings. -- San Francisco Chronicle

It may be the closest a paperback book has come to being an art object. -- New York

One of the more winning and witty artistic experiments of recent times. -- Washington Post

Outbursts of words that find themselves in an altogether new syntactical space; there, like notes, they sing a painted music. -- William A. Gass, Artforum

About the Author

Tom Phillips RA has worked widely in many media. Among his previous books is The Postcard Century, published by Thames & Hudson in 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson; 4 edition (April 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500285519
• ISBN-13: 978-0500285510
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #616,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Stands Alone, January 20, 2002

By 

William Heavenor (Vancouver, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, Revised Edition (Paperback)

I own multiple copies and give them away to worthy friends. Visually, artistically, and intellectually stunning, this masterpiece is unique in the world of art/literature. The author/artist Tom Phillips began this work in the 1960s, and first published it in book form in the 1980s. He called the result of his decades of effort The Humument and it is a completely illustrated version of W. H. Mallock's 19th Century novel A Human Document. Each page is a well conceived and compelling work of art. On each page the author leaves only a few of the original words revealed. These surviving phrases tell, in prose and poetry, the pathetic love story of Bill Toge. Symbiotically linked to the art itself, the preserved text, and its tale of Toge, reveal a story Phillips found submerged within the original text, a story which Mallock neither wrote nor intended. Phillips calls his work `mining for meaning'. Everyone who has received this book from me has had great difficulty putting it down until they had read/absorbed/experienced/lived/studied it from cover to cover. If there is such a thing as a priceless book, The Humument would be a good candidate for the category.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun stuff, November 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, Revised Edition (Paperback)

I expected this to be arty rubbish, but I was greatly surprised. It's a unique and strangely beautiful experience -- and not only that, but the picture-per-page structure makes it ideal to dip into during spare moments. Whether it actually has any deep meaning is open to debate, but each page has something on it to provoke thought. I love this thing.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating mixed media autobiography of the author/artist., October 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, Revised Edition (Paperback)

Incredible treatment of a victorian novel using techniques of modern illumination to create a autobiographical love story. All written from within the context of an existing novel. Great graphics by one of England's best living artists. Surely unlike any other piece of literature you'll buy this year. See the Tom Phillips web page.