Beauties of My Style

Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library Hanke Gallery: Errors have always been part of bookmaking, but with the arrival of the printing press, they became formally acknowledged through the device of the errata list. From the late fifteenth century onward, printers and authors compiled lists of “faults escaped” or “errors committed,” often with justifications and apologies, which were added to books as either tipped-in slips or additional sheets at the end. “‘Beauties of My Style’: Errata and the Printed Mistake” surveys errata alongside their companion texts from across nearly half a millennium, chronicling themes of censorship, misrepresentation, intervention, and instability tied to the written word.

The title of the exhibition derives from a statement by James Joyce, written shortly before the release of Ulysses: “These are not misprints but beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of.” The exhibition, which is organized thematically, encompasses thousands of these “beauties” across approximately 30 works, ranging from maps with inaccurate geographies and details, to religious texts in which typographic errors were seized upon as proof of heresy, to mid-run book corrections reflecting textual variations within one edition.