Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth-Century Book

Hazel Wilkinson

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781107199552
• eBook ISBN: 9781108196291
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Illustrations
• A Note on the Text
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction ‘The Wits have sent for the Book’: (Non-)Reading, and Spenserian Books before 1700
• Chapter 1 Spenser the Whig: John Hughes’s Clubbable Edition, 1715
• Chapter 2 Miscellaneous Spenser: Verse Miscellanies and Miscellaneous Culture, 1716–1750
• Chapter 3 Spenser Illustrated: Antiquaries and Illustrations: Thomas Birch’s 1751 Edition
• Chapter 4 Spenser Annotated: Two Scholarly Editions, 1758–1759
• Chapter 5 Spenser and the Public Domain: The Scottish Publishers’ Series, 1778–1795
• Conclusion The Legacy of Eighteenth-Century Spenserianism
• Appendix A Checklist of the Eighteenth-Century Editions of Edmund Spenser
• Works Cited
• Index