A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, Revised Edition

In 1966, the British artist Tom Phillips purchased an obscure Victorian novel entitled A Human Document from a secondhand bookshop. He then proceeded to "treat" it: he colored and blacked out many of the lines and even pages so that certain key words and phrases formed new images and sequences; he cut up and rearranged other pages to form new narrative passages. Miraculously, the rather staid original novel was turned into an entirely new work, full of stories, erotic incidents, poems, surrealistic catastrophes, and visual beauty. The treated novel became known through literary and art magazines and quickly acquired a cult following. When it was first published in book form in the United States in 1983, New York magazine said, "It may be the closest a paperback book has come to being an art object." Tom Phillips has continued to transform the Victorian novel, and this third edition of A Humument includes one hundred of his latest treatments.

The English painter, writer, and composer Tom Phillips curated the groundbreaking exhibition “Africa: The Art of the Continent” at the Royal Academy in 1992. He is himself a collector of African art, specializing in the arts of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. His other books include The Postcard Century.