A book on chapters

Just a little longer | Sydney Review of Books

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.

And previously:

The Chapter: A History

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?

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.