Blurb (pronounced blurb)
(1) A brief
promotional piece, almost always laudatory, used historically for books,
latterly for about any product.
(2) To
advertise or praise in the manner of a blurb.
1907: Coined
by US graphic artist and humorist Gelett Burgess (1866–1951). Blurbs are a specific type of advertisement, similar
exercises in other contexts known also as “puff pieces”, “commendations” or “recommendations”. Generally, they contain elements designed to
tempt a buyer which may include a précis (something less than a detailed summary),
a mention of the style and a recommendation.
The term was originally invoked to mock the excessive praise printed on
book jackets and was often parodied in a derisively imitative manner and is
still sometimes critically used thus but it’s also now a neutral descriptor and
an accepted part of the publishing industry.
Blurb is a noun & verb, blurbing & blurbed are verbs, blurbist
is a noun and blurbish is an adjective; the noun plural is blurbs.
The
blurb has apparently existed for some two-thousand–odd years but the word became
well-known only after a publishing trade association dinner in 1907, Gelett
Burgess displaying a dust jacket printed with the words “YES, this is a “BLURB”!”, featuring the (fictitious) Miss Belinda
Blurb who was said to have been photographed “...in the act of blurbing”, Burgess adding that to blurb was “… to make a sound like a publisher…” and
was “…a check drawn on fame, and it is
seldom honoured”. There are sources
claiming the word was coined by US academic and literary critic Brander
Matthews (1852–1929) in his essay American
Character (1906) but Professor Matthews acknowledged the source genuinely
was Burgess, writing in the New York
Times (24 September 1922): “Now and
again, in these columns I have had the occasion to employ the word “blurb”, a
colourful and illuminating neologism which we owe to the verbal inventiveness
of Mr Gelett Burgess”.
Burgess
had released Are You a Bromide? in 1906
and while sales were encouraging, he suggested to his publishers (BW Huebsch)
that each of the attendees and the upcoming industry dinner should receive a copy
with a “special edition” dust cover. For
this, Burgess used the picture of a young lady who had appeared in an advertisement
for dental services, snapped in the act of shouting. It was at the time common for publishers to use
pictures of attractive young ladies for book covers, even if the image was entirely
unrelated to the tome’s content, the object being to attract a male readership. Burgess dubbed his purloined model “Miss
Belinda Blurb” and claimed she had been photographed “in the act of blurbing”; mid-blurb as it were.
The
dust cover was headed with the words “YES,
this is a “BLURB”! All the Other Publishers commit them. Why Shouldn’t We?”
and knowing a blurb should not in moderation do what can be done in excess,
went on to gush about the literary excellence of his book in rather the manner
a used car salesman might extol the virtues of some clapped-out car in the
corner of the yard. His blurb concluded “This book is the Proud Purple Penultimate!”
The industry must have been inspired because
the blurb has become entrenched, common in fiction and non-fiction alike and
the use of the concept can be seen in film, television, social media and just
about anywhere there’s a desire to temp a viewer. Indeed, the whole idea of “clickbait” (something
which tells enough to tantalize but not enough to satisfy without delving
deeper) is a functional application of a blurb.
Depending on the source, the inspiration for the word came from either
(1) the sound made by a book as it falls to the floor, (2) the sound of a bird
chirping or (3) an amalgam of “burp” & “blather”. The author left no clue.
In his book,
Burgess innovated further, re-purposing the word "bromide". In inorganic chemistry, a bromide is a binary
compound of bromine and some other element or radical, the construct being brom- (an alternative form of bromo- (used preceding a vowel) which
described a substance containing bromine (from the French brome, from the Ancient
Greek βρῶμος (brômos) (stink)) + ide (the suffix used in chemistry to describe substances comprising
two or more related compounds. However, early
in the twentieth century, Bromide was a trade name for a widely available
medicine, taken as a sedative and in some cases prescribed to diminish “an excessive
sexual appetite”. It was the sedating
aspect which Burgess picked up to describe someone tiresome and given to trite
remarks, explaining “a bromide” was one “…who
does his thinking by syndicate and goes with the crowd” and was thus boring
and banal. A bromine’s antonym was, he
helpfully advised, a “sulphite”.
Unfortunately, while blurb flourished, bromide & sulphites as binary
descriptors of the human condition have vanished from the vernacular.
Lindsay Lohan with body double during shooting for Irish Wish (Netflix, due for release in 2023). The car is a Triumph TR4.
Nteflix's
blurb for Irish Wish: Always a bridesmaid, never a bride — unless, of course,
your best friend gets engaged to the love of your life, you make a spontaneous
wish for true love, and then magically wake up as the bride-to-be. That’s the supernatural, romantic pickle
Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls, The Parent Trap) finds herself in upcoming romantic
comedy, Irish Wish. Set in the rolling
green moors of Ireland, the movie sees Lohan's Maddie learn her dreams for true
love might not be what she imagined and that her soulmate may well be a
different person than she originally expected. Apparently magic wishes are
quite insightful.
Blurb Your Enthusiasm (2023, distributed by Simon & Schuster).
Louise Willder has for a quarter century been a copywriter for Penguin, in that time composing some 5000 blurbs, each a two-hundred-odd word piece which aims both to inform and tempt a purchase. Her non-fiction debut Blurb Your Enthusiasm is not only a review of the classic blurbs (the good, the bad and the seriously demented) but also an analysis of the trends in the structure of blurbs and the subtle shifts in their emphasis although, over the centuries, the purpose seems not to have changed. Ms Willder also documents the nuances of the blurb, the English tendency to understatement, the hyperbolic nature of Americans and the distaste the French evidently have of having to say anything which might disclose the blurb’s vulgar commercial purpose and she traces, over time, how changing attitudes and societal mores mean what’s written of a nineteenth century classic is very different now to when first it was published. Inevitably too, there are the sexual politics of authorship and publishing and blurbs can reveal as much by the odd hint or what’s left unsaid than what actually appears on a dust cover. Academics and reviewers have perhaps neglected the blurb because it has traditionally been dismissed as mere advertising but, unless the author’s name or the subject matter is enough of a draw, even more than a cover illustration or title, it’s the blurb which can close the sale and collectively, they’re doubtlessly more widely read than reviews. Blurb Your Enthusiasm is highly recommended.
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