Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth-Century Book
Cambridge University Press, 11/30/2017
EAN 9781107199552, ISBN10: 1107199557
Hardcover, 274 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–6) occupied an important place in eighteenth-century culture. Spenser influenced almost every major writer of the century, from Alexander Pope to William Wordsworth. What was it like to read Spenser in the eighteenth century? Who made Spenserian books, and how did their owners use and interpret them? The first comprehensive study of all of the eighteenth-century editions of Edmund Spenser addresses these questions through bibliographical analysis, and through examination of the history of the book and of eighteenth-century literature and culture. Within these contexts, Hazel Wilkinson provides new information about the production, contents, texts, and reception of the eighteenth-century editions of Spenser, to illuminate how his cultural presence became so far-reaching. With each chapter structured around a major edition of Spenser's work, this volume provides a timely addition to arguments about the nature of literary history and the growing cult of great writers of the past.
List of abbreviations
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. 'The Wits have sent for the Book'
(non-)reading, and Spenserian books before 1700
1. Spenser the Whig
John Hughes's Clubbable Edition, 1715
2. Miscellaneous Spenser
verse miscellanies and miscellaneous culture, 1716–50
3. Spenser illustrated
Thomas Birch's 1751 Edition
4. Spenser annotated
two scholarly editions, 1758–9
5. Spenser and the public domain
the Scottish Publishers' series, 1778–95
Appendix A
checklist of the eighteenth-century editions of Edmund Spenser
List of works cited
Index.