Manuscript miscellanies in early modern England

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Where to find it

Information & Library Science Library

Call Number
Z106.5.G7 M36 2014
Status
Available

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Summary

Perhaps more than any other kind of book, manuscript miscellanies require a complex and 'material' reading strategy. This collection of essays engages the renewed and expanding interest in early modern English miscellanies, anthologies, and other compilations. Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England models and refines the study of these complicated collections. Several of its contributors question and redefine the terms we use to describe miscellanies and anthologies. Two senior scholars correct the misidentification of a scribe and, in so doing, uncover evidence of a Catholic, probably Jesuit, priest and community in a trio of manuscripts. Additional contributors show compilers interpreting, attributing, and arranging texts, as well as passively accepting others' editorial decisions. While manuscript verse miscellanies remain appropriately central to the collection, several essays also involve print and prose, ranging from letters to sermons and even political prophesies. Using extensive textual and bibliographical evidence, the collection offers stimulating new readings of literature, politics, and religion in the early modern period, and promises to make important interventions in academic studies of the history of the book.

Contents

Introduction: the emergence of the English miscellany / Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith -- Before (and after) the miscellany: reconstructing Donne's Satyres in the Conway Papers / Daniel Starza Smith -- Donne, rhapsody and textual order / Piers Brown -- Early modern letter-books, miscellanies and the reading and reception of scribally copied letters / James Daybell -- The rector of Santon Downham and the Hieroglyphical Watch of Prague / Noah Millstone -- Unlocking the mysteries of Constance Aston Fowler's verse miscellany (Huntington Library MS 904): the hand b sribe identified / Helen Hackett -- William Smith, Vere Southerne, Jesuit Missioner, and three linked manuscript miscellanies / Cedric C. Brown -- Attribution and anonymity: Donne, Ralegh and Fletcher in British Library, Stowe MS 962 / Lara M. Crowley -- Copying epigrams in manuscript miscellanies / Joel Swann -- Camden's remaines and a pair of epideictic poetry anthologies / Joshua Eckhardt -- "The disagreeable figure of a common-place" in Katherine Butler's late-seventeenth-century verse miscellany / Victoria E. Burke.

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