The art of marginalia.


Joe Orton and his partner, Kenneth Halliwell (now there's a love/hate relationship if there ever was one) served a four month (some sources say a six month) sentence for defacing library books. Literally hundreds of web pages tell the story of Orton, and of course almost all relate this particular incident, though with very limited detail. Finding a page with a bit more detail takes some searching, but can be found. We can then learn that:
1959 - They begin a two year campaign of stealing and defacing books from the Islington public library, then smuggling them back into the stacks, where they shock and appall patrons and staff alike. The defacements are often satirical, sometimes obscene, and use the art of collage to focus on the juxtaposition of incongruous images and text, both in terms of cover art and the pages within.

1962 - Orton and Halliwell are arrested for stealing 72 library books and willfully damaging them, including the removal of 1653 plates from art books. They are jailed in separate prisons for a period of four months.
Another site reminds us that one era's defacement is another's collector's item:
Trivia: Joe and Kenneth were sentenced to six months in prison, for stealing, defacing and then replacing library books. Most of them were taken from this library. The altered versions were usually very funny, and from what I understand now, the books are on display in a local museum. The fact that the council is now using them as a tourist attraction is sort of interesting.
And lest we give the impression that budding artists should experiment with library art as they hone their craft, this is probably the proper place to link to an exhibit of marginalia on the site of the Cambridge University library. The exhibit attempts to show us the various distressing forms of vandalism toward books that visitors to the library exercise. Sadly, though meant to deter, the large photographs in the exhibit somehow seem more to attract than repel.



Go to: In the margins of cyberspace.