This article was published in a special edition of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice Practice (subtitled Art-Writing, Paraliterature and Intrepid Forms of Practice), edited by Susannah Thompson and Laura Edbrook. The article took the form of a Preamble outlining my research field and methodology, and a piece of fictional art-writing, ‘Bad Retail’. The latter was first written to accompany a series of my own narrative paintings. The text was originally disseminated through a series of exhibitions in the form of printed handouts that were included alongside the visual works. The story evolved from a simultaneous investigation of two related devices in literature and painting: anachronism and collage. These terms are linked by an act of displacement: of objects from history and of images from their source. This compositional tendency is characteristic of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century romantic fiction, which often refuses to conform to (and remain within) accustomed genre categories. The aforementioned narrative was accompanied here by a series of illustrations based on the paintings and drawings that I produced in tandem with the text. The aim was to treat the journal submission as a form of ‘illuminated manuscript’, through which anachronism might be understood as both a verbal and a visual strategy.