The Origins of Electronic Literature as Net/Web Art

While the history of electronic literature is not exclusively Web-based, the significance of the Net as a means of sharing – which is what publishing, an activity so central to literature, is all about – needs to be recognised, as does the influence of hypertextuality, which, while arguably predating the Internet as a literary concept, certainly became more pronounced once authors recognised the potential syntheses between the world of writing and the World Wide Web.