 First page ofA Humument, 1970 edition | |
| Author | Tom Phillips |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Tom Phillips |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Artist's book |
| Publisher | Thames & Hudson |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Publication place | UK |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 367 |
A Humument: A treated Victorian novel is analtered book by British artistTom Phillips, published in its first edition in 1970 and completed in 2016. It is a piece of art created overW H Mallock's 1892 novelA Human Document whose title results from the partial deletion of the original title:A Human document.
Phillips drew, painted, andcollaged over the pages, while leaving some of the original text to show through in the form oferasure. Through this process, A Humument is a new story with a new protagonist named Bill Toge, whose name appears only when the word "together" or "altogether" appears in Mallock's original text. From being created over many decades, it follows anonlinear narrative, and in recent editions Phillips has rewritten pages to include references to modern history that in part appear to beanachronistic.
When asked about the book, Phillips replied:
"It is a forgotten Victorian novel found by chance ... plundered, mined, and undermined itstext to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems and replaced thetext [he'd] stripped away with visual images of all kinds."
A Humument was begun in the 1960s. In 1970, Tetrad Press put out a small edition. The first trade edition was published in 1980 byThames & Hudson, which also published revised editions in 1986, 1998 and 2004; the fifth edition was published in 2012. Each edition revises and replaces various pages. Phillips's stated goal was to eventually replace every page from the 1970 edition.
Phillips used the same technique (always with the Mallock source material) in many of his other works, including the illustration of his own translation ofDante'sInferno, (published in 1985).
The altered text has been sometimes used in "reconstructions" or "realizations" where artists create a work using the fragmentary text as a basis. For instance in the early 1970s, the Music Department at theUniversity of York performed an opera,Irma, devised by Phillips in 1969, whose lyrics and plot were based onA Humument.
Tom Phillips created a digital version ofA Humument, A Humument App for the iPad, released in November 2010. The app was critically acclaimed, receiving favourable reviews inThe Independent (22 Nov),Eye Magazine blog (17 Nov), andDesign Observer (5 Nov). A version for the iPhone was released 17 January 2011. A 'final' printed edition, extensively reworked by Phillips, was published byThames & Hudson in 2016,[1] and reviewed by Clare Pettitt in theTimes Literary Supplement.[2]