Synopses & Reviews
This book explores the significance of the physicality of manuscripts and printed early modern texts. Focusing on the material aspects and social practices of texts as a new way of reading meaning, it reassesses the developing relationships between cultures of manuscript and print from the late sixteenth to early eighteenth century.
About the Author
JAMES DAYBELL is Reader in Early Modern British History at the University of Plymouth, UK. He is author of
Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (2006), editor of
Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450-1700 (Palgrave, 2001; winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Award for Best Collaborative Project, 2002) and
Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700 (2004). He has published more than a dozen articles and essays on the subjects of early modern women and letters, and is currently completing a monograph entitled
The Material Letter in Early Modern England.
PETER HINDS is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Plymouth, UK. His research currently focuses on the history of the book and of reading in late-seventeenth-century England. He has published several articles on Sir Roger L'Estrange (the Surveyor and Licenser of the Press during the reigns of Charles II and James II) and the London book trade, as well as 'The Horrid Popish Plot': Roger L'Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in London, 1678-83 (2010).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on the Contributors
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Material Matters; J.Daybell& P.Hinds
PART I: THE MATERIAL LETTER
Losing and Regaining the Material Meanings of Epistolary and Gift Texts; C.C.Brown
Secret Letters in Early Modern England; J.Daybell
Copycopia, or The Uses of Copied Correspondence in Court Culture: A case study; A.Gordon
PART II: THE MATERIAL BOOK: PRINT AND SOCIAL PRACTICES OF READING
Possessing the Visual: The Materiality of Visual Print Culture in Later Stuart Britain; M.Knights
Hackney Poets and Hireling Pamphleteers: Professional Authorship and the Book Trade in Late-Seventeenth-Century London; P.Hinds
Early Modern Sermon Paratexts and the Religious Politics of Reading; M.A.Lund
Textuality, Privacy and Politics: Katherine Philips's Poems in Manuscript and Print; G.Wright
PART III: MATERIAL MANUSCRIPTS
Neighbourhood, Social Networks, and the Making of a Family's Manuscript Poetry Collection: The Case of British Library Additional MS 25707; A.F.Marotti
Casting Off Blanks: Hidden Structures in Early Modern Paper Books; J.Gibson
The Early Modern University Manuscript Beyond the University; C.Burlinson
'The art of Numbering well': Late Seventeenth-Century Arithmetic Manuscripts Compiled by Quaker Girls; V.E.Burke
Notes and References
Index