"A collection of more than 250 epigraphs from across 500 years of literature, a quick and lively way to immerse yourself in the world of books and ideas. There are few things a bibliophile loves more than an epigraph. Those intriguing quotations, sayings, snippets of songs and poems that appear just before Chapter One do more than just set the tone for the experience ahead: the epigraph informs us about the author's sensibility. Are we in the hands of a literalist or a wit? A cynic or a romantic? A writer of great ambition or a miniaturist? The epigraph hints at hidden stories and frequently comes with one of its own. Edited and with original commentary by Rosemary Ahern, The Art of the Epigraph collects epigraphs from across literature. Featuring the cumbersome but amusing prefaces found in early novels like Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels to the crisp and clever epigrams that Hemingway and Fitzgerald made fashionable in the twentieth century, this collection traces not only the art of the epigraph, but the history of the book"--"A collection of 250 or more epigraphs arranged thematically and chosen from a broad range of books and genres, approximately half of which will be annotated with original commentary by the author"--