Author: Arthur SherboPublisher: English Literary Studies
ISBN:
Category : Booksellers and bookselling
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
Isaac Reed, Editorial Factotum
Author: Arthur SherboPublisher: English Literary Studies
ISBN:
Category : Booksellers and bookselling
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
The Most Disreputable Trade
Author: Thomas F. BonnellPublisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191559733
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
A publishing phenomenon began in Glasgow in 1765. Uniform pocket editions of the English Poets printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis formed the first link in a chain of literary products that has grown ever since, as we see from series like Penguin Classics and Oxford World Classics. Bonnell explores the origins of this phenomenon, analysing more than a dozen multi-volume poetry collections that sprang from the British press over the next half century. Why such collections flourished so quickly, who published them, what forms they assumed, how they were marketed and advertised, how they initiated their readers into the rites of mass-market consumerism, and what role they played in the construction of a national literature are all questions central to the study. The collections played out against an epic battle over copyright law, and involved fierce contention for market share in the 'classics' among rival publishers. It brought despair to the most powerful of London printers, William Strahan, who prophesied that competition of this nature would ruin bookselling, turning it into 'the most pitiful, beggarly, precarious, unprofitable, and disreputable Trade in Britain'. Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets were part of such a collection, dubbed 'Johnson's Poets'. The third edition of this collection, published in 1810, brought the national project to its high water mark: it contained 129 poets, plus extensive translations from the Greek and Roman classics. By this point, all the features that characterize modern series of vernacular classics had been established, and never since has such an ambitious expression of the poetic canon been repeated, as Bonnell shows by peering forward into the nineteenth century and beyond. Based on work with archival materials, newspapers, handbills, prospectuses, and above all the books themselves, Bonnell's findings shed light on all aspects of the book trade. Valuable bibliographical data is presented regarding every collection, forming an indispensable resource for future work on the history of the English poetry canon.
The Quest for Cardenio
Author: David CarnegiePublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199641811
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
Bringing together leading scholars, critics, and theatre practitioners, this collection of essays is devoted to 'The History of Cardenio', a play based on Don Quixote and said to have been written by Shakespeare and the young man who was taking his place, John Fletcher.
Writing the History of the British Stage
Author: Richard SchochPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107166926
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 407
Book Description
A study of British theatre historiography, from its origins in the Restoration to its development as an academic discipline in the twentieth century.
The Rise of Robert Dodsley
Author: Harry M. SolomonPublisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809316519
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
The new biography of the publisher and bookseller who premiered the work of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson deftly integrates Dodsley's life story with the literary transition from court patronage to the age of print that paved the way for the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Solomon (English, Auburn U.) details the unique circumstances that led Dodsley from his position as a weaver's apprentice to his career as a playwright, culminating in his last incarnation as one of the most influential literary forces of his time. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Author: Samuel JohnsonPublisher:
ISBN: 0199284792
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 459
Book Description
Samuel Johnson's last literary work, the Lives of the Poets, offers a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to Johnson's own time. Always recognized as a major contribution to English biography and criticism, it is also one of Johnson's most readable and eloquent achievements. This is the first scholarly edition since 1905 and includes a full introduction and critical apparatus. This is volume one of four.
Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century
Author: Michael CainesPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199642389
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 251
Book Description
This book considers the impact of the eighteenth century on Shakespeare, and vice versa. It describes how actors, critics, painters, and Enlightenment philosophers read and responded to Shakespeare's plays and poems, and how those plays and poems changed their lives.
Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Author: Roger LonsdalePublisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191569402
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
Johnson himself wrote in 1782: 'I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets'. Always recognized as a major biographical and critical achievement, Samuel Johnson's last literary project is also one of his most readable and entertaining, written with characteristic eloquence and conviction, and at times with combative trenchancy. Johnson's fifty-two biographies constitute a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to his own time, with extended discussions of Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior, Swift, Pope, and Gray. The Lives also include Johnson's memorable biography of the enigmatic Richard Savage (1744), the friend of his own early years in London. Roger Lonsdale's Introduction describes the origins, composition, and textual history of the Lives, and assesses Johnson's assumptions and aims as biographer and critic. The commentary provides a detailed literary and historical context, investigating Johnson's sources, relating the Lives to his own earlier writings and conversation, and to the critical opinions of his contemporaries, as well as illustrating their early reception. This is the first scholarly edition since George Birkbeck Hill's three-volume Oxford edition (1905). This is volume one of four.
Constructing the Canon of Early Modern Drama
Author: Jeremy LopezPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107030579
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
Through short, provocative readings of unfamiliar plays, this book provides the first ever history of the canon of Renaissance drama.
Shakespeare's Midwives
Author: Arthur SherboPublisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874134490
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
"This work is a companion piece to Arthur Sherbo's Birth of Shakespeare Studies: Commentators from Rowe (1709) to Boswell-Malone (1821). The contributions of seven men to the commentary on the plays and poems of Shakespeare have been largely ignored or forgotten. As a result, modern editions of Shakespeare's works have claimed for themselves or for nineteenth-century editors and commentators information and insights that have been anticipated by one or another of eighteenth-century commentators. Shakespeare's Midwives brings to light these earlier commentators, adding a valuable new perspective to Shakespeare studies." "Samuel Johnson, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, and Isaac Reed are names known to all students of Shakespeare's works. They brought the commentary on the plays and poems to a point where future scholars could, for the most part, concentrate on sources and, primarily, on the text of these works. These four men were omnivorous readers; all were great book collectors. And the knowledge they had won through their wide reading in all genres and in a number of languages came to the fore as they edited, either individually or in collaboration, edition after edition of Shakespeare's plays, sometimes with the poems included. But they were not alone in their endeavors, for many of their friends and acquaintances - and even perfect strangers - responded to their public and private pleas for help." "It is with these last, the co-adjutors, that this volume is concerned. Either in direct conversation, in letters, or in the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine or some other periodical, these amateur Shakespeareans made their suggestions or voiced their objections to what they had read in one or more of the editions of Shakespeare. Sometimes they signed their names; more often they cloaked their identity. Thus, one often encounters a suggestion, embedded usually in a note by one of the editors, by "Anon."" "It is, however, identifiable amateur Shakespeareans whom Sherbo has elected to call Shakespeare's midwives. He has tried to do justice to the contributions of each of these seven men, some of whom wrote hundreds of notes on some aspect of Shakespeare's works, but of necessity only part of their contributions could be quoted or cited. Sherbo has also tried to show that a considerable number of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Shakespeareans have either been ignorant of, have ignored, or have mutilated some of the notes of these men. In a number of instances, he shows that nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars have been anticipated by their eighteenth-century forerunners." "This work makes clear that claims of precedence by later scholars must be made only when the contributions of these seven men and some of their contemporaries, named or unnamed, have been examined."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved