Hidden pictures take book art to the edge

Can electronic editions ever match the delights of fore-edge artwork?

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I've discovered a whole new erogenous zone today – an erogenous zone for books, obviously. An archivist at the University of Iowa, Colleen Theisen, has found a series of images hidden on the edges of her books. They're revealed when you riffle your fingers over the pages – the epitome of a book-tease.

The images Theisen discovered date from 1837, when an author called Robert Mudie concealed images in his series of books about the seasons. My favourite is autumn, with its own tiny narrative of a lakeside walk. But it turns out people have been hiding images – such as this one of Windsor Castle in diarist John Evelyn's biography of Margaret Godolphin – since at least 1649.

Which made me wonder what future readers will make of early 21st-century attempts to bust the boundaries of the printed book. That is, if their hyper-turbo-powered iThinks will still be able to read them ...

ArtLiz Bury
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