Explore "The Art of Book-Making" by Washington Irving on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"If that severe doom of Synesius be true -- ‘It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor, than their clothes,' -- what shall become of most writers? " / Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy
I have often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many heads, on which nature seems to have inflicted the curse of barrenness, should teem with voluminous productions. As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is continually finding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I chanced, in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a scene which unfolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making craft, and at once put an end to my astonishment.