Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature (Elements in Publishing and Book Culture)

This Element examines a watershed moment in the recent history of digital publishing through a case study of the pre-web, serious hypertext periodical, the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (1994-1995). Early hypertext writing relied on standalone, mainframe computers and specialized authoring software. With the Web launching as a mass distribution platform, EQRH faced a fast-evolving technological landscape, paired with an emergent gift and open access economy. Its non-linear writing experiments afford key insights into historical, medium-specific authoring practices. Access constraints have left EQRH under-researched and threatened by obsolescence. To address this challenge, this study offers platform-specific analyses of all the EQRH's cross-media materials, including works that have hitherto escaped scholarly attention. It deploys a form of conceptually oral ethno-historiography: the lore of electronic literature. The Element deepens our understanding of the North American publishing industry's history and contributes to the overdue preservation of early digital writing.

• | Author: Astrid Ensslin
• | Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 31, 2022
• | Number of Pages: 144 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1108828884
• | ISBN-13: 9781108828888