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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.
List of contents
Before (and after) the miscellany: reconstructing Donne's Satyres in the Conway Papers. Donne, rhapsody and textual order. Early modern letter-books, miscellanies and the reading and reception of scribally copied letters. The rector of Santon Downham and the hieroglyphical watch of Prague. Unlocking the mysteries of Constance Aston Fowler's verse miscellany (Huntington Library MS HM 904): the Hand B scribe identified. Attribution and anonymity: Donne, Ralegh, and Fletcher in British Library, Stowe MS 962. Copying epigrams in manuscript miscellanies. Camden's Remaines and a pair of epideictic poetry anthologies. 'The disagreeable figure of a common-place' in Katherine Butler's late 17th-century verse miscellany.
About the author
Joshua Eckhardt is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Daniel Starza Smith is British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford.
Summary
This collection of essays models and refines the study of these complicated volumes. Using extensive textual and bibliographical evidence, it offers stimulating new readings of literature, politics and religion in the early modern period, and promises to make important interventions in the history of the book.
