Material Readings of Early Modern Culture

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.

"This volume of essays is essential reading for anyone interested in the materiality of texts in their inception, production, transmission, and reception, offering timely interventions into a developing conversation about early modern material culture. A key strength of the book is its combined theoretical and practical thrust: case studies are contextualized and theorized, genuine questions and avenues for future study identified. The essays in this volume leave readers wanting more a good result and attest to the range and vitality of current scholarship focused on illuminating early modern texts and social practices among both established and emerging scholars." Jeanne Shami, SHARP News

Auteur
CEDRIC C. BROWN Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Reading, UK VICTORIA E. BURKE Associate Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, Canada CHRISTOPHER BURLINSON College Lecturer in English at Jesus College, Cambridge, UK JONATHAN GIBSON English Subject Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK ANDREW GORDON Co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies and Programme Co-ordinator of the Department of English at the University of Aberdeen, UK MARK KNIGHTS Professor of History, Warwick University, UK MARY ANN LUND Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Leicester, UK ARTHUR F. MAROTTI Distinguished Professor of English at Wayne State University, USA GILLIAN WRIGHT Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Birmingham, UK

Contenu
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