Edgy work

Image caption: This dramatic scene was painted, probably in the 19th century, on a peculiar substrate—the edges of a book’s pages. The George Peabody Library houses the Dorothy McIlvain Scott Collection, an assortment of more than 200 books with exemplary bindings and fore-edge paintings like this one, which does not adorn a copy of Moby-Dick but Jane Scott’s alluringly titled The Contributions of Q.Q. to a Periodical Work: With Some Pieces Not Before Published.

Credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University