Print publication

Mass Observation was founded in 1937 by Tom Harrission, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings. Its purpose was to create an 'anthropology of ourselves', in other words, to provide a study of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. In its first period, from 1937 to 1950, it published twenty-two books, many of which are being reissued in Faber Finds. These books constitute a unique social history of the period. Since 1970 the Mass Observation Archive has been at Sussex University. In 1981 the New Mass Observation Project was born. It is run from the Archive under the direction of Dorothy Sheridan. The Archive is a magnificent resource which continues to provide rich material for books. Recent publications have included Nella Last's War, Nella Last's Peace, Our Longest Days (all published by Profile) and three selections of Mass Observation Diaries of the Second World War and just after , edited by Simon Garfield and published by Ebury Press.

(Source: Mass-Observation)

The Word Made Flesh and its immediate predecessor, Through Light and the Alphabet, were both made as distinct formulations in response to theoretical issues in writing and ecriture. Both address the status of materiality in visual presentation of poetic work. Both are direct responses to the work of Jacques Derrida, and also, to the dictates and orthodoxies of many of the California Language Poets whose work and lives had been so intimately bound to mine. The typographic format of the Word Made Flesh was meant to trip the eye, return one constantly to the plane of discourse, of material production. I made this book, and Through Light and the Alphabet, out of complete love of letters. Probably more than any other of my books, these two are absolute celebrations of the beauty and expressive capability of type.

(Source: Author)

Zang Tumb Tumb was Marinetti's first published collection of parole in libertà (words in liberty), a form of poetry at the same time verbal and visual. Begun in 1912 and published in 1914, the work is an account of Marinetti's experience of the Siege of Adrianople (now Edirne, Turkey) during the Balkan War of 1912, which he covered as a war correspondent. The title Zang Tumb Tumb evokes the sounds of mechanized war—artillery shelling, bombs, explosions.

(Source: MoMA)