Why did books start being divided into chapters? Joshua Barnes reviews Nicholas Dames’ history of literary segmentation, a study that slices through and pauses over what chapters have always told us about the times we live in.
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/just-a-little-longer
And previously:
What does the chapter’s beginnings, in the Bibles of late antiquity and early medieval Europe, reveal about the way our books and stories are put together?
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chapter-history
The authors of such miscellanies were forward-thinking in their sense that some texts are consulted more than they are read; they envisioned a focussed, interested, but not immersed reader, dipping into their books by locating relevant passages. Organizing those passages often became the task of editors as much as of writers.