A Humument

A Humument: A treated Victorian novel is an altered book by British artist Tom Phillips, first published in 1970. It is a piece of art created over W H Mallock's 1892 novel A Human Document whose title results from the partial deletion of the original title: A Human document.'

Phillips drew, painted, and collaged over the pages, while leaving some of the original text to show through. The final product was a new story with a new protagonist named Bill Toge, whose name appears only when the word "together" or "altogether" appears in Mallock's original text.

When asked about the book, Phillips replied:

"It is a forgotten Victorian novel found by chance ... plundered, mined, and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems and replaced the text [he'd] stripped away with visual images of all kinds."

A Humument was begun in the 1960s. In 1970, Tetrad Press put out a small edition. The first trade edition was published in 1980 by Thames & Hudson, which also published revised editions in 1986, 1998 and 2004; the fifth edition was published in 2012. Each edition revises and replaces various pages. Phillips's stated goal is to eventually replace every page from the 1970 edition.