I had heard books having titles on their spine is relatively recent. Partially due to books being stored like they are here, to prevent the pages from rotting. Allegedly titles started to be printed on spines with Alice in Wonderland, at least for mass-produced books.
I’m having trouble coming up with a source, Wikipedia mentions early books not having titles on the spine, but doesn’t mention storage or when this practice changed. Or a source. That’s as far as I was able to track any of this down.
All this to say, there might be prior precedent for this. Which for me moves her behavior (even if that’s not her stated reason) towards eccentric, rather than book-hating.
That definitely isn’t true. My father collected antiquarian books for a while and there are plenty of books from the 18th century that have titles on their spines.
I had heard books having titles on their spine is relatively recent. Partially due to books being stored like they are here, to prevent the pages from rotting. Allegedly titles started to be printed on spines with Alice in Wonderland, at least for mass-produced books.
I’m having trouble coming up with a source, Wikipedia mentions early books not having titles on the spine, but doesn’t mention storage or when this practice changed. Or a source. That’s as far as I was able to track any of this down.
All this to say, there might be prior precedent for this. Which for me moves her behavior (even if that’s not her stated reason) towards eccentric, rather than book-hating.
That definitely isn’t true. My father collected antiquarian books for a while and there are plenty of books from the 18th century that have titles on their spines.
The practice more-or-less coincided with the invention of the printing press. Books became cheap and abundant, so special care was less important.