Literary Folios and Ideas of the Book in Early Modern England

Transcription

1 Literary Folios and Ideas of the Book in Early Modern England

2 History of Text Technologies, developed in conjunction with an interdisciplinary research program at Florida State University, is dedicated to new scholarship and theory in the history of books and, more generally, the transformation of sign systems into engineered objects. This exciting new series moves from the analysis of texts as material objects to the analysis of texts as material agents. It is committed to the recognition that texts cannot be separated from the various and changing technologies through which they are created. Included are analytic bibliography, paleography and epigraphy, history of authorship, history of reading, study of manuscript and print culture, and history of media. Rather than being solely a historical overview, this series seeks out scholarship that provides a frame for understanding the consequences of both globalism and technology in the circulation of texts, ideas, and human culture. For more on the series, see the History of Text Technologies website at Series Editors Gary Taylor is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English and the Founding Director of History of Text Technologies program at Florida State University. Francois Dupuigrenet Desroussilles is Professor of Religion at Florida State University. Elizabeth Spiller is Professor of English, and a member of the interdisciplinary History and Philosophy of Science program, at Florida State University. Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture Stephanie Leitch Literary Folios and Ideas of the Book in Early Modern England Francis X. Connor

3 Literary Folios and Ideas of the Book in Early Modern England Francis X. Connor

4 LITERARY FOLIOS AND IDEAS OF THE BOOK IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Copyright Francis X. Connor, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Connor, Francis X. Literary folios and ideas of the book in early modern England / Francis X. Connor. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Literature publishing England History 17th century. 2. Literature publishing England History 16th century. 3. Books England History 17th century. 4. Books England History Books Sizes History. 6. Book industries and trade England History 17th century. 7. Book industries and trade England History 16th century. I. Title. Z326.C dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August

5 To Leary and Annalivia that their lives may be books in folio

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7 Contents General Editor s Preface Acknowledgments ix xi Introduction 1 1 Ungentle Hoarders : From Manuscript to Print in Sidney s Arcadias? 23 2 Samuel Daniel s Works and the History and Theory of the Book 61 3 Ben Jonson s Workes and Bibliographic Integrity 93 4 Whatever you do, buy : Literary Folios and the Marketplace in Shakespeare, Taylor, and Beaumont and Fletcher 121 Epilogue: Henry Herringman s Restoration Folios 167 Notes 179 Index 229

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9 General Editor s Preface Texts are not just isolated, inert material objects; texts are also material agents, made by material agents, catalyzing other material agents. As D. F. McKenzie s phrase sociology of texts implies, the relationship of one text to others entails relationships to human makers and human users. Texts cannot be separated from the various, overlapping, and restless human technologies through which those texts are created and then do the cultural work that texts do. To recognize that texts depend upon technologies does not imply any simplistic technological determinism. But that recognition does encourage us to focus on change rather than stability: changes in technology, changes in culture, and the changing relationship between the two. Text technologies have historically been irresistibly invasive and transformative. Unlike most areas of humanities research, the history of text technologies is not limited to a particular nationality, language, or geographical area. The technologizing of the word, as Walter Ong called it, is best understood as the multi-millennial evolution and dispersal of increasingly complicated, comprehensive, and multi-sensory artificial memory systems, which have driven human cultural evolution. Those memory machines, because they are prosthetic, are proximity engines, recording some part of a culture in a portable form, which can then be transmitted and translated into another culture. Travelers like Marco Polo and John Smith could record their own transnational experience in text packages, which then traveled even more extensively than they had. Texts are travelers, pioneers, immigrants, and founding fathers. The text that has influenced European and American culture more than any other, The Book, the Bible, migrated from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and then into every European and most Native American vernaculars. Texts are time-traveling technologies, too, what Joseph Roach calls time portals : they can connect two cultures separated by time as well as space. Through texts, Dante could feel a

10 x General Editor s Preface profound personal relationship to Virgil, who had been dead for more than a thousand years, and Montaigne could write one of the most powerful expressions of his own individuality through an essay On Some Verses of Virgil. The study of text technologies thus is the ideal engine of interdisciplinary transformation and integration in the humanities, because those technologies cross the boundaries that separate nations, ethnicities, and religions. Against the fragmenting of the humanities into ever-smaller identity categories, this series studies the mechanisms by which inherited identities are connected and transformed. Those mechanisms are not only material, economic, and political, but also aesthetic. As they enable, exploit, extend, transform, or resist certain aesthetic possibilities, text technologies are inevitably also aesthetic technologies. They create media platforms that shape, and are shaped by, evolving and contested generic categories and aesthetic imperatives. The collector s interest in the medieval-illuminated manuscript, the Dürer print, or the seventeenth-century-french folio as an objet d art in its own right, regardless of its intellectual content, mirrors the bibliographer s interest in artisanal routines and material products of the book trade. The history of the forms of texts is also a history of human culture in its largest sense, a history that speaks to how we use texts to establish ways of thinking, means of knowing, practices of living, assemblings of identity, and definitions of the beautiful. Such histories do not simply turn toward the past as an escape from the present. They frame and shape our understanding of possible transnationalisms, possible synesthesias, and possible genres of humanness. These histories are explorations of incarnate becomings. And we hope that they will become a part of every reader s own becoming. Gary Taylor

11 Acknowledgments All errors and imperfections are, of course, my own. Credit for anything worthwhile in this book must be shared with the many people who have offered their ideas and encouragement over the course of its writing. Gary Taylor and Terri Bourus have been nothing less than extraordinary friends, mentors, and critics; working with them on the New Oxford Shakespeare has been the greatest pleasure, and I look forward to collaborating with them for many years to come. Elizabeth Fowler has been generous with her friendship and time in shepherding this project from its conception. Denise Albanese encouraged me to become a scholar. David Vander Meulen taught me how to look at books carefully, and his exemplary enthusiasm and respect for the history and practice of bibliography should be a model for everyone in the field. Katherine Maus lent her sharp, critical eye at crucial points of this project. Additionally, I appreciate the research libraries that shared their expertise and resources, notably the Folger Shakespeare Library (especially Steven Galbraith) and the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas (particularly Elspeth Healy). Terry Belanger allowed me to take classes at Rare Book School at University of Virginia that helped shape some of the ideas contained herein. I am grateful for the many friendly and illuminating bibliographical conversations I have had with Adam Hooks and Sarah Neville. For kindnesses large and small I would also like to recognize Evelyn Tribble, Robert Matz, Ian Gadd, Richard Noble, Joseph Loewenstein, David Lee Miller, Joel Davis, and Mary Ellen Lamb. Clare Kinney and Keicy Tolbert read sections of early stages of this manuscript and offered constructive feedback. I would not have been able to write this book without John T. Scholl s help and advice. Particular thanks to Megan Haury, whose consistent support throughout our time at UVA made even the worst drudgeries of doctoral education tolerable.

12 xii Acknowledgments Wichita State University has proven an excellent place for research and scholarship; William Woods and Darren Defrain deserve special notice for their generous collegiality. I greatly appreciate all of my students at Virginia and Wichita who have, unwittingly or not, road-tested some of the material included here. In particular, my graduate assistants at WSU, Jackie Moore and Justina Violette, generously offered their time and talent for this project. I would also like to acknowledge the panelists and auditors who attended and responded to portions of this book presented at the Shakespeare Association of America, the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, the MLA International Conference, and Sidney at Kalamazoo. A part of chapter 4 revises and recontextualizes some parts of my article Shakespeare s Theatrical Folio (Philological Quarterly 91 [2012], ); thanks to the editors of PQ for granting permission to represent this material. I am eternally grateful to my wife and sometimes academic widow Leah for her patience and support; congratulations on finishing the Boston Marathon in Finally, I send my love to our two children, Leary and Annalivia, to whom this book is dedicated.