The shape of the de Manian oeuvre has for the most part been determined by post hoc rationalisations. During his lifetime he published two editions of Blindness and Insight (1971, revised edition 1983) and Allegories of Reading in 1979. These monographs, if that is what they are, bring cohesion to collections of essays by de Man in more or less satisfactory ways. The Rhetoric of Romanticism (1984) was planned for a similar purpose during de Man's final years and he also agreed a structure with Lindsay Waters for the book that became Critical Writings 1953 to 1978 (published posthumously in 1989). However, de Man also had a number of unrealised projects and possible trajectories of research that he pursued throughout his academic career. The texts included in Part IV are a selection of the many notes de Man made about the ordering, editing and public presentation of his work. One such volume that he envisaged but never brought to fruition was to have been entitled The Unimaginable Touch of Time, perhaps the ‘other’ monograph he cites in the introduction to Blindness and Insight. It would have drawn together the Gauss lectures and other essays as a historical study of romanticism.