An afterword is a
literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of
literature
Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...
. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed.
An afterword may be written by someone other than the
author
In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...
of the book to provide enriching comment, such as discussing the work's historical or cultural context (especially if the work is being reissued many years after its original publication).
See also
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Conclusion
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Epilogue
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Foreword
A foreword is a (usually short) piece of writing, sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Typically written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between th ...
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Postface
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Postscript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...
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Preface
__NOTOC__
A preface () or proem () is an introduction to a book or other literature, literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a ''foreword'' and precedes an author's preface. The preface o ...
References
{{Book structure
Book design
Literary theory