I got a cheap copy of a single stray volume of Leland's Itinerary in its second edition . It is possible to get modern transcripts in chunky paperback form where the information flow is homogenised for reader convenience. Opening the second editon 1740 I was struck by the dislocation of the narrative flow, the switch from conventional typography to black letter text, hands pointing in the margins, blocks of unsteady meaning and incomprehensible cascades of data. Great silences dominated certain pages. Words collapsed into punctuation marks. Blocks of alternative texts loomed unnervingly in the margins. No doubt it aims at an authentic reflection of the fragmentary original, but the liveliness of the page format had a certain Shandean feel that does not exclude the perverse. At the back of the volume were two extraordinary maps, one of which in its puckish spidery convolutions, reminded me of the first edition of Sterne's Tristam Shandy. |