Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth-Century Book

Abstract

Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590-96) 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. dr hazel wilkinson is a Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham, where she lectures on eighteenth-century literature. She has published articles and book chapters on subjects including eighteenth-century literature, typography, and the history of the book trade, and is currently an editor on TheOxfordEditionoftheWritingsof Alexander Pope. Wilkinson has also created a database of eighteenthcentury printers' ornaments in partnership with Cambridge University Library.

Recent approaches to paratext studies in eighteenth‐century literature

“…What distinguishes this form of author‐specific paratext scholarship is the precise focus of the research in question: for example Karian (1999) and Phillips (2002) both prioritise paratextual elements within the works of Swift and de Sade respectively, whilst scholars such as Pritchard (2012) draw upon paratextual data to support or provide further insight into a different aspect of a text (in this instance, social topography). Wilkinson's superb monograph Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth‐Century Book (2017) successfully blends these two approaches, exploring paratextual elements via a bibliographic perspective and thus providing a complex and thorough analysis of the eighteenth‐century reception of Spenser. More recently, Williams (2021) presents a similarly ambitious and much‐needed study of Laurence Sterne's use of paratext, exploring catchwords, footnotes, and frontispieces alongside already popular elements of Sterne's texts such as the famous black page.…”