At The Margin Archive Matters, often bizarre and obscure, from the world of books

At The Margin, which was started under the aegis of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, was an email newsletter published, more or less monthly, between 1999 and 2003. It lapsed into inactivity at about the same time its editor took up the time-consuming work of teaching novel-writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop. It was generally about books, and it cultivated a sensibility that was aesthetically conservative, politically liberal, philosophically skeptical, and technologically biased. It usually featured about a dozen screens of eclectic text on anything from Jane Austen to the state of ebooks, plus a lot of interesting web links. It often included messages from its subscribers, all of whom were well-spoken and intelligent, some of whom were famous. The back issues of At The Margin are archived here, and you can reach them by the live links below. If you look up a particular item in an issue of ATM, be sure to examine the subsequent issue as well. ATM readers often wrote in with remarkably intelligent illuminations of the stories, and those responses are always found in the following issue. At The Margin never rented, sold, or distributed the e-mail addresses of its subscribers. Vol. 1, #1 September 16, 1999 Electronic Books Writers Choose Books for the Next Millennium Bad Writing Contests Jane Austen on the Web Vol. 1, #2 October 13, 1999 Project Gutenberg Compared to Alexandria Library Banned Book Week The Year's Growth in Retail Book Sales An Attempt to Support Fiction on the Web with Advertising Count Belisarius by Robert Graves Vol. 1, #3 October 27, 1999 Bad Poetry The Dismal Outlook for Book Reviews The State of Encyclopedia Britannica The Amazon Bookstore Battle The Praise Singer by Mary Renault Vol. 1, #4 December 1, 1999 Books that Shaped Science Daphne DuMaurier A Lipogram of the Letter E Dance of the Dwarfs by Geoffrey Household Vol. 1, #5 January 5, 2000 The Online Calendar of Henry James Correspondence Ralph Schoenman Sues Bryan Magee for Philosophy Book Acrobat Reader Gets Badly Working Pay-to-read Feature Political Conversation without Human Intervention Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen Vol. 1, #6 February 2, 2000 The Oxford English Dictionary Why Did George Orwell Choose the Title Nineteen-eighty Four? The Books Writers Don't Read Blackeyes by Dennis Potter Vol. 1, #7 March 1, 2000 Where Does Copyright Come From? Richard Mitchell, The Underground Grammarian Neo-Luddism Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym Vol. 1, #8 May 4, 2000 The Death of Edward Gorey "Muggles" as a Trademark Dime Novels Alibris Tries to Horn in on Used Book Sales The Origin of the Brunists by Robert Coover Vol. 1, #9 June 26, 2000 The Ego and Reading More Midlist Books than Ever, But a Declining Market Share A New Collection of P. G. Wodehouse A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell Vol. 1, #10 August 10, 2000 Where Paradigms Come From Large Print Books John Milton on the Web Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House by Eric Hodgins Vol. 1, #11 September 20, 2000 Mark Twain and U. S. Grant NetLibrary and the Ideal Role of Ebooks Time-Limited Ebooks Five 19th Century Novels that Will Never Be on Masterpiece Theater The Care of Time by Eric Ambler Vol. 1, #12 October 31, 2000 Why Don't Historians Write for the Public? Queen Elizabeth I, Author A Page with Its Own Light Source The Ig® Nobel Prize The Darkness and the Dawn by Thomas B. Costain Vol. 1, #13 November 29, 2000 Scholarly Journals and Predatory Pricing Steve Martin at the National Book Awards Audio Books Online Gladiator Movies The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes Vol. 1, #14 December 30, 2000 Do Bigger Books Sell Better? Librarian of Congress Misses Chance to Protect Fair Use from DMCA The Real Cost of Harry Potter The Fifth String by John Philip Sousa Vol. 2, #1 January 31, 2001 Word Up, Beowulf Stories Told Backward A Lost Mark Twain Story Who Was C. L. Moore? My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart Vol. 2, #2 February 28, 2001 Oprah's Book Club The Role of the Small Press Wall Street Analysts Begin to Question Amazon.com Curtailing the Right to Read Aloud Galahad by John Erskine Vol. 2, #3 March 26, 2001 Bartlett's Familiar Quotations Listeners Prefer Male Reading Voices The Editor Discovers Audio Books Former House Rep Beats Up on Librarians The Irish R.M. by Martin Ross and E. OE. Somerville Vol. 2, #4 April 30, 2001 Margaret Mitchell's Nephews Will Never Be Hungry Again! ABA Drops Suit Against Borders and Barnes & Noble Money-Losing Scholarly Books The Psychosis of Philip K. Dick Baraka by John Ralston Saul Vol. 2, #5 May 31, 2001 The Choice Not to Read The Passing of Douglas Adams A Lack of Imagination in Marketing Language Mitchell Heirs Get Comeuppance for Their Bullying The Avenue Victor Hugo Cat There Will Be a Short Interval by Storm Jameson Vol. 2, #6 June 30, 2001 "Me Too" in the Book Review Business The Archimedes Palimpsest Library Web Filters Block Access to Super Bowl XXX The Web: Disappearing Free Services The Gypsy Moths by James Drought Vol. 2, #7 July 30, 2001 Justice Department Arrests Programmer for Work on Backup Program Did C. S. Lewis Actually Write All the C. S. Lewis Books? Success and the Good-Looking Author Pooh-poohing the Sales Records of Mein Kampf No Adam in Eden by Grace Metalious Vol. 2, #8 August 28, 2001 Is It Real Or Is It a Novelization? The Death of Fred Hoyle A Deal for Libraries to Lend Ebooks Book of the Month Club Restores Editorial Panel The Abandoned by Paul Gallico Vol. 2, #9 September 26, 2001 A Short History of the Word "Normalcy" Product Placement in a Fay Weldon Novel Keeping Obscure Authors in Print with Patronage Community Book-Reading Projects The Life I Really Lived by Jessamyn West Vol. 2, #10 October 30, 2001 Lists in Fiction The Strange Outlook for Ebooks John Adams, Patron Saint of the American Police State Libraries Forgo Federal Money and Web Filters that Go with It Morning Journey by James Hilton Vol. 2, #11 November 29, 2001 The Visual Language of Book Covers Publishers and Libraries Find Points of Agreement Nicespeak and a New Book About It The Battle of the Villa Fiorita by Rumer Godden Vol. 2, #12 December 31, 2001 Are Books Getting Too Expensive? Where Do Orcs Come From? Melville Predicts 2001 New Developments in Electronic Paper Canada North by Farley Mowat Vol. 3, #1 February 7, 2002 Acid Paper at the Library of Congress Bookstore Defends Customer Purchase Records from Government Robert Nozick Dies A Meditation on Brand-Name Books Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum Vol. 3, #2 March 12, 2002 A Brief History of the Booker Prize Arundhati Roy Gets Out of Jail A New and Sinister Meaning for "Reading List" Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini Vol. 3, #3 April 24, 2002 Books as Objects of Hate Can Information Go Extinct? The Author as a Character in the Story Middlemarch by George Eliot Vol. 3, #4 May 29, 2002 Posthumously Completed Books Category Management in Book Retailing The Curse of Sophie Kerr Brazilian Adventure by Peter Fleming Vol. 3, #5 June 30, 2002 127 1/2 Years of Typewriters Want a Bookstore? Write an Essay An Update on the FBI and What You've Been Reading An Extended Quotation from A Tale of Two Cities The Glass-Blowers by Daphne Du Maurier Vol. 3, #6 July 31, 2002 A History of the Petard (of Hoisting-on Fame) The 2002 Bulwer-Lytton Contest Reading While Traveling A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Vol. 3, #7 September 19, 2002 Roget's Thesaurus Buying and Selling University Press Books Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell Vol. 3, #8 November 27, 2002 Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop Must Move The Danube Swabians Travis's Health Problems The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James Vol. 3, #9 December 31, 2002 Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop Finds a New Location Programmers Not Guilty in First Big DMCA Case Travis's Hopeful Condition Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Vol. 4, #1 March 31, 2003 Rutgers University Press: A Book Dealer's View Left Behind -- to Be Targeted by Spammers Convoluted Explanation of Coolidge College Downloads A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute Vol. 4, #2 May 29, 2003 The Internet Book List The Changing Meaning of "Coupon Clipper" The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Thirdlion home page