A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and the Production of Early Modern Texts: A Festschrift for Gordon Campbell

Through a series of case studies written by a global team of international scholars, this Concise Companion demonstrates how manuscripts and printed books met the needs of two different approaches to literacy – an important cultural marker of the early modern period. Whereas manuscript culture centred on a group of literate readers and writers communicating with one another according to established practices, print culture served a wider audience and greatly increased literacy amongst the general population. Together, the written records in these two different forms combined to create the literary achievements of the Renaissance.

The Companion is divided into three sections, covering archival and manuscript studies; the provenance of texts and the authority of editions; and studies of genre,  religion, and literary history. The range of essays throughout is exceptionally broad – from the printing of the gospels in Arabic, to a contemporary reconceptualization of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and a group dedicated to the life and writings of Milton. The result is a text that provides an invaluable platform for highlighting on–going attention to the history of the book and its corollary subjects of reading and writing practices in the 1500s and 1600s.

Notes on Contributors x

Acknowledgements xiv

Introduction xv
Edward Jones

Part I Manuscript Studies 1

1 Stanford University’s Cavendish Manuscript: Wolsey, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, and Milton 3
Elaine Treharne

2 Texts Presented to Elizabeth I on the University Progresses 21
Sarah Knight

3 Analysing a Private Library, with a Shelflist Attributable to John Hales of Eton, c.1624 41
William Poole

4 Young Milton in His Letters 66
John K. Hale

5 The Itinerant Sibling: Christopher Milton in London and Suffolk 87
Edward Jones

6 Milton, the Attentive Mr Skinner, and the Acts and Discourses of Friendship 106
Cedric C. Brown

Part II Printed Books 129

7 Printing the Gospels in Arabic in Rome in 1590 131
Neil Harris

8 Tyranny and Tragicomedy in Milton’s Reading of The Tempest 150
Karen L. Edwards

9 The Earliest Miltonists: Patrick Hume and John Toland 171
Thomas N. Corns

10 The Ghost of Rhetoric: Milton’s Logic and the Renaissance Trivium 188
Jameela Lares

Part III Production, Dissemination, Appropriation 207

11 Misprinting Bartholomew Fair: Jonson and ‘The Absolute Knave’ 209
John Creaser

12 Reliquiae Baxterianae and the Shaping of the Seventeenth Century 229
N.H. Keeble

13 Marvell and the Dutch in 1665 249
Martin Dzelzainis

14 Did Milton Read Selden? 266
Sharon Achinstein

15 Hands On 294
Neil Forsyth

16 Shakespeare with a Difference: Dismembering and Remembering Titus Andronicus in Heiner Müller’s and Brigitte Maria Mayer’s Anatomie Titus 322
Pascale Aebischer

By Ferry, Foot, and Fate: A Tour in the Hebrides 346

Index 000

Edward Jones is a Regents Professor of English at Oklahoma State University and  the Editor of Milton Quarterly. His research interests centre on seventeenth–century archival records created by the English state, church, and parish and how  such documents inform the life and writings of John Milton. Book–length  publications include  Milton’s Sonnets: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900–1992 and ,  Young Milton: The Emerging Author, 1620–1642. A selection of his essays can be found in RES, JEGP,  A Concise Companion to Milton, The Oxford Handbook of Milton, and Milton in Context.