In the Realm of Ends: The Fate of Moveable Type

Abstract

There is something strange, perhaps, in producing a journal called ‘Moveable Type’ that has never appeared in print, or been anywhere near a press. How or why the editors of the first volume landed on the name is lost to history, or at least in need of some research. But what is certain is that the journal, born (enrolled?) in the (academic) year 2004-5, is a child of the Internet. A thoroughly digital native; assembled, uploaded, published, downloaded and read—one hopes—online. There is, perhaps, a further irony in the fact that, until recently, Moveable Type was a repository for papers delivered at the UCL English Department’s annual graduate conference, and so a record of the spoken word. And last year, the journal made a tentative move into the realm of podcasts. From the oral to the written to the digital, from written record to sound recording. We appear to be leaving the Gutenberg Galaxy.