A page of A Humument

A Humument: A treated Victorian novel is an illustrated book by British artist Tom Phillips, first published in 1970. It is a piece of art created over William Hurrell Mallock’s 1892 novel A Human Document.

Phillips drew, painted, and collaged over the pages, while leaving some of the original text to show through. The final product was 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.

A Humument was begun in the 1960’s. In 1970, Tetrad Press put out a small edition. The first trade edition was published in 1980 by Thames and Hudson, which also published revised editions in 1986, 1998 and 2004; future editions are planned. Each edition revises and replaces various pages. Phillips’s stated goal is to eventually replace every page from the 1970 edition.

Phillips has used the same technique (always with the Mallock source material) in many of his other works, including the illustration of his own translation of Dante‘s Inferno, (published in 1985).

This post was inspired by the comments section to this post by Il Giornale Nuovo.

One more image from the latest entry to that superb blog:

Detail of a woodland scene dominated by an anthropomorphic tree-figure
by Pietro Ciafferi (1600-54).