Below is a fantastic opening to an acknowledgements section by Janine Barchas, in Graphic Design, Print Culture and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (CUP: 2003):

Book acknowledgements are not just frank tallies of debts. For better or worse, acknowledgements – like other paratexts placed conventionally at the threshold of a book – mediate the book’s relationship with the reader. Modern readers tend to read such an opening inventory of names as a code shortcut to a book’s authority – as brand. Authors tend to name people for whose association or help they are proud as well as grateful. Johnson and Pope were right: every such public thank you is a feeble boast, a veiled declaration of intimacy with those talented or powerful enough to have been in a position to lend assistance. Unlike them, I cannot upend this custom and declare that I did this on my own merit. Instead, I may brag of having benefited from the teachings, kindnesses, and advice of some of the very best. Yet, in acknowledging my debts to the following people I disavow all credit that might otherwise accrue to me by association. I was not always worthy of the help and tutelage I received. In most cases, I should really have learned far more than I did and taken better notes.

I particularly the author’s use of the words ‘disavow’ and ‘accrue’ and that this opening to her book – for an opening it is – draws upon and points to the subject matter of her work: how books have been historically structured.

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