Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture: 1740–1790
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 6/6/2016
EAN 9781107128163, ISBN10: 1107128161
Hardcover, 320 pages, 23.8 x 15.6 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture offers the first study of manuscript-producing coteries as an integral element of eighteenth-century Britain's literary culture. As a corrective to literary histories assuming that the dominance of print meant the demise of a vital scribal culture, the book profiles four interrelated and influential coteries, focusing on each group's deployment of traditional scribal practices, on key individuals who served as bridges between networks, and on the aesthetic and cultural work performed by the group. The book also explores points of intersection between coteries and the print trade, whether in the form of individuals who straddled the two cultures; publishing events in which the two media regimes collaborated or came into conflict; literary conventions adapted from manuscript practice to serve the ends of print; or simply poetry hand-copied from magazines. Together, these instances demonstrate how scribal modes shaped modern literary production. This title is also available as Open Access.
Introduction
the literary coterie in the eighteenth-century media landscape
1. Wrest Park and North End
two mid-century coteries
2. Formation, fame, and patronage
the Montagu–Lyttelton coterie
3. Identity and influence from coterie to print
Carter, Chapone, and the Shenstone–Dodsley collaboration
4. Memorializing a coterie life in print
the case of William Shenstone
5. 'This new species of mischief'
Montagu, Johnson, and the quarrel over character
6. Transmediations
marketing the coterie traveller
7. Literary sociability in the eighteenth-century personal miscellany
Conclusion
Bibliography.