Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T07:59:47.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Habits of reading and early modern literary culture

from 1 - Modes and means of literary production, circulation and reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Steven Zwicker
Edited by
David Loewenstein  and
Janel Mueller
David Loewenstein
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Janel Mueller
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access

Summary

My subject is the consumption and production of vernacular literature in early modern England – of epic and romance, of history and pamphlet, of song and sonnet, ode and epistle, satire and epigram – and more especially the ways in which habits of reading created a field of expectations in which literature was imagined and into which texts were issued. I want to begin, however, with a personal letter, and not a canonical literary text, because the letter touches on both the production and consumption of literature, and at a number of points. In December of 1614, shortly before he took orders, John Donne wrote to Sir Henry Goodyer for help in retrieving his scattered verse, not exactly, it turns out, because Donne was ashamed of his literary vocation – though there is a sense of valediction in the letter that covers Donne’s secular writing – but rather to secure scattered manuscript copy with a view to print publication. Donne had been contemptuous of print and was aware that others knew of that contempt, but necessity pressed him, and the appeal to Goodyer points not only to the dilemmas and desires of a poet, c. 1600, but also to the merits of script and print, the status and uses of verse, and the ways in which poems and letters might be read and remembered:

One thing more I must tell you; but so softly, that I am loath to hear myself: and so softly, that if that good Lady [the Countess of Bedford] were in the room, with you and this Letter, she might not hear. It is, that I am brought to a necessity of printing my Poems, and addressing them to my L. Chamberlain. This I mean to do forthwith; not for much publique view, but at mine own cost, a few Copies. I apprehend some incongruities in the resolution; and I know what I shall suffer from many interpretations: but I am at an end, of much considering that …By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own rags, and that cost me more diligence, to seek them, than it did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you, which it will be too late to see, for that use, when I see you: for I must do this, as a valediction to the world, before I take Orders. But this is it, I am to aske you; whether you ever made any such use of the letter in verse, A nostre Countesse chez vous, as that I may not put it in, amongst the rest to persons of that rank; for I desire very very much, that something should bear her name in the book …I pray tell me as soon as you can, if I be at liberty to insert that: for if you have by any occasion applied any pieces of it, I see not, that it will be discerned, when it appears in the whole piece. Though this be a little matter, I would be sorry not to have an account of it, within as little after New years tide, as you could.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature , pp. 170 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achinstein, Sharon, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader, Princeton University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Argyll, Archibald Campbell, Marquis, and 8th Earl, Instructions to a Son, Edinburgh and London: for Trench, D., 1661. 3rd edn, 1689.Google Scholar
Ashhurst, William, Reasons against Agreement with a late Printed Paper, intituled, Foundations of Freedome, [London:] for Thomas Underhill, 1648.Google Scholar
Attridge, Derek, Well-weighed Syllables: Elizabethan Verse in Classical Metres, Cambridge University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Bald, R. C., John Donne: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Beal, Peter, In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and Their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Beal, Peter, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Vol. 1: 1450–1625 (2 parts); Vol. 2 [Part 1]: 1625–1700, London: Mansell and New York: Bowker, 1980–93.Google Scholar
Beddard, R. A., ‘A Traitor’s Gift: Hugh Peter’s Donation to the Bodleian Library’, Bodleian Library Record, 16 (April 1999).Google Scholar
Bell, Michael and Barnard, J., ‘Provisional Count of STC Titles 1475–1640’, Publishing History, 31 (1992).Google Scholar
Bell, Michael and Barnard, J., ‘Provisional Count of Wing Titles 1641–1700’, Publishing History, 55 (1998).Google Scholar
Birrell, T. A., English Monarchs and Their Books: From Henry II to Charles II, The Panizzi Lectures, 1986, London: The British Library, 1987.Google Scholar
Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, Cambridge University Press, 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolgar, R. R. (ed.), Classical Influences on European Culture AD 1500–1700, Cambridge University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Brome, Richard, Five New Playes, London: for H. Moseley, R. Marriot and T. Dring, 1653.Google Scholar
Brown, Cedric C., (ed.), Patronage, Politics and Literary Traditions in England, 1558–1658, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Cain, Tom, Poetaster, (ManchesterUniversity Press, 1995), 266, lines –2.Google Scholar
Camille, Michael, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Carey, John, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art, new edn, London: Faber and Faber, 1990.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence, ‘Problems of Reading in the Essais’, in Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce, ed. McFarlane, I. D. adn Maclean, Ian (Oxford University Press, 1982) –7.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Chapman, George, The Poems, ed. Brooks, Phyllis Bartlett, Oxford University Press, 1941.Google Scholar
[Charles, I.,] The Kings Cabinet opened: Or, Certain Packets of Secret Letters & Papers, Written with the Kings own Hand, and taken in his Cabinet at Nasby-Field, June 14. 1645, London: for R. Bostock, 1645.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Speght, The Works of our Ancient and Learned English Poet … newly printed… (London, 1602),Google Scholar
Clarke, M. L., Classical Education in Great Britain 1500–1900, Cambridge University Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Clifford, Anne, The Diary of Anne Clifford, 1616–1619. A Critical Edition, ed. Acheson, Katherine O., New York: Garland, 1995.Google Scholar
Cressy, David, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England, Cambridge University Press, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Digby, Kenelm, Observations Upon Religio Medici, London: for L. Chapman and D. Frere, 1643. 4th edn, 1659.Google Scholar
Digby’s, Kenelm Sir, remarks on reading Religio Medici, in Observations Upon Religio Medici (London, 1643)Google Scholar
Elton, G. R., Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics: Papers and Reviews, 1946–1972, 3 vols., Cambridge University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Evans, Robert C., Habits of Mind: Evidence and Effects of Ben Jonson’s Reading, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Fairfax, ThomasFairfax, Baron, The Poems of Thomas, Third Lord Fairfax, from MS Fairfax 40 in the Bodleian Library, ed. Bliss, EdwardRead, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 14, New Haven, CT: Auspices of Yale University, 1909.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Anthony and Peter, Roberts (eds.), Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folger, V., b. 327, The Essays or Moral Politike and Millitarie Discourses (London, 1603).Google Scholar
Gardner, Helen and Healy, Timothy ed., The text is cited from John Donne, Selected Prose, (Oxford University Press, 1967) –5;Google Scholar
Garnier, Robert, Two Tragedies: Hippolyte and Marc Antoine, ed. Hill, Christine M. and Morrison, Mary G. (London: Athlone Press, 1975) –5,Google Scholar
Ginzburg’s, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992),Google Scholar
Grabes, Herbert, Das englische Pamphlet: Politische und religiose Polemik am Beginn der Neuzeit (1521–1640), Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1990.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony and Jardine, Lisa, ‘Teacher, Text, and Pupil in the Renaissance Classroom’, History of Universities, 1 (1981).Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony and Jardine, Lisa, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129 (1990).Google Scholar
Griffin, Dustin, Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1800, Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halasz, Alexandra, The Marketplace of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Joseph, Virgidemiarum. The three last Bookes. Of byting satyres, London: R. Bradocke for R. Dexter, 1598. 2nd edn, 1599.Google Scholar
Hannay, Margaret, Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Harvey, Gabriel, Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, ed. Moore-Smith, George Charles, Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press, 1913.Google Scholar
Herrick, Robert, The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. Martin, L. C., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, Derek and Steven, Zwicker, ‘High Summer at Nun Appleton, 1651: Andrew Marvell and Lord Fairfax’s Occasions’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas, Hobbes, Thomas (trans.) Eight bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre written by Thucydides. Interpreted immediately out of the Greeke by T. Hobbes, London: for H. Seile, 1629.Google Scholar
Hobbs, Mary, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Hunter, Michael and Gregory, Annabel (eds.), An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century: Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652–1699, Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Ingram, Randall, ‘Robert Herrick and the Making of Hesperides’, Studies in English Literature, 38.1 (Winter 1998).Google Scholar
Jonson, Ben, The Complete Poems, ed. Parfitt, George, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Jonson’s, , marked copies of Martial are in the Folger Library: Epigrammaton libri (London, 1615),Google Scholar
Kaplan, M. Lindsay, The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelliher, Hilton, Andrew Marvell, Poet and Politician, 1621–78: An Exhibition to Commemorate the Tercentenary of His Death, London: British Museum Publications, 1978.Google Scholar
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn and Despres, Denise L., Iconography and the Professional Reader: The Politics of Book Production in the Douce ‘Piers Plowman’, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Lewalski, Barbara K., Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric, Princeton University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Library, Folger, copy of L’Histoire de la Naissance, progrez et decadence de l’heresie de ce siecle (Paris, 1610)Google Scholar
Library, Folger, copies of Prynne’s New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny (London, 1641)Google Scholar
Love, Harold, ‘Rochester’s “I’ th’ isle of Britain”: Decoding a Textual Tradition’, Manuscript Studies, 1100–17006 (London: The British Library, 1997).Google Scholar
Love, Harold, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lumley, Jane Lumley, Baroness, , Iphigenia at Aulis, translated by Lady Lumley, ,The Malone Society, London: C. Whittingham, 1909.Google Scholar
Madan, Francis F., A New Bibliography of the Eikon Basilike of King Charles I, Oxford University Press, 1950.Google Scholar
Maltzahn, Nicholas, ‘Laureate,Republican, Calvinist: An EarlyResponse to Milton and Paradise Lost (1667)’, Manuscript Studies 29 (1992) –98.Google Scholar
Marotti, Arthur, John Donne: Coterie Poet, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Marotti, Arthur, Manuscript, Print and the English Renaissance Lyric, Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Marvell, Andrew, The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. Margoliouth, H. M., rev. Legouis, Pierre and Duncan-Jones, E. E., 2 vols., 3rd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Marvell, Andrew, The Rehearsal Transpros’d, ed. Smith, D. I. B., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Milton, John, Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books (London, 1678),Google Scholar
Milton, John, A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works in English and Latin of John Milton, ed. Toland, John, 2 vols., Amsterdam, 1698.Google Scholar
Milton, John, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Wolfe, Don M. et al., 8 vols., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–82.Google Scholar
More, Henry, Philosophicall Poems, Cambridge: R. Daniel, 1647.Google Scholar
More’s, , Utopia (London, 1551),Google Scholar
Morrison, Paul G., Index of Printers, Publishers and Booksellers in Donald Wing’s Short Title Catalogue, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.Google Scholar
Mueller, Janel, The Native Tongue and the Word: Developments in English Prose Style, 1380–1580, University of Chicago Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Norbrook’s, David, Writing the English Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1999),Google Scholar
Orgel, Stephen, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Orgel, Stephen, ‘The Renaissance Artist as Plagiarist’, ELH, 48 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parry, Graham, ‘The Great Picture of Lady Anne Clifford’, in Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts, ed. Howarth, David, Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Prynne, William, The Treachery and Disloyalty of Papists to their Soveraignes (London, 1643)Google Scholar
Prynne, William, New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny, London: for M. S[parke], 1641.Google Scholar
Reynolds, L. D. and Wilson, N. G., Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Riddell, James A. and Stanley, Stewart, Jonson’s Spenser: Evidence and Historical Criticism, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Rosenblatt, Jason P. and Winfried, Schleiner, ‘John Selden’s Letter to Ben Jonson on Cross-Dressing and Bisexual Gods’, English Literary Renaissance, 29 (Winter 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, Bernard M., The Rosenthal Collection of Printed Books with Manuscript Annotations: A Catalogue of 242 Editions Mostly Before 1600 Annotated by Contemporary or Near-Contemporary Readers, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Sanders, Eve, Gender and Literacy on Stage in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Schulze, Sabine, Leselust: Niederlandische Malerei von Rembrandt bis Vermeer, (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1993).Google Scholar
Sharpe, Kevin, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steven N. (eds.), Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Sherman, William H., John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Speght, Rachel, The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, ed. Lewalski, Barbara K., Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Sprunger, Keith, Trumpets form the Tower: English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands, 1600–1640, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994.Google Scholar
Spufford, Margaret, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England, London: Methuen, and Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Stewart, Alan, Reading and Homosociality (Princeton University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Stoddard, Roger E., Marks in Books, Illustrated, and Explained, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith, ‘The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England’, in Baumann, Gerd (ed.), The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Vicars, John, Former ages never heard of, and after ages will admire. Or a brief review of the most materiall Parliamentary transactions, London: M. S. for T. Jenner, 1654. 2nd edn, 1656. 3rd edn, 1660.Google Scholar
Von Maltzahn, Nicholas, ‘The First Reception of Paradise Lost (1667)’, Review of English Studies, 47 (November 1996).Google Scholar
Voragine, Jacobus, The golden Legend (1483)Google Scholar
Walker, Clement, Compleat History of Independency, London: for R. Royston and R. Lownds, 1661. 3 more edns in 1661.Google Scholar
Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Woudhuysen, H. R., Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zim, Rivka, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer 1535–1601, Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Zwicker, Steven N., ‘Irony, Modernity, and Miscellany: Politics and Aesthetics in the Stuart Restoration’, in Nenner, Howard (ed.), Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain: Essays Presented to Lois Green Schwoerer, University of Rochester Press, 1997.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×