Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture

Abstract

Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 1740-1790 offers the first study of manuscript-producing coteries as an integral element of eighteenth-century Britain's literary culture. As a corrective to literary histories assuming that the dominance of print meant the demise of a vital scribal culture, the book profiles four interrelated and influential coteries, focusing on each group's deployment of traditional scribal practices, on key individuals who served as bridges between networks, and on the esthetic and cultural work performed by the group. Literary Coteries also explores points of intersection between coteries and the print trade, whether in the form of individuals who straddled the two cultures; publishing events in which the two media regimes collaborated or came into conflict; literary conventions adapted from manuscript practice to serve the ends of print; or simply poetry hand-copied from magazines. Together, these instances demonstrate how scribal modes shaped modern literary production. This work is in copyright. It is subject to statutory exceptions and to the provisions of relevant licensing agreements; with the exception of the Creative Commons version the link for which is provided below, no reproduction of any part of this work may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.An online version of this work is published at [http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/978131 6423202] under a Creative Commons Open Access license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium for noncommercial purposes providing appropriate credit to the original work is given. You may not distribute derivative works without permission. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0All versions of this work may contain content reproduced under license from third parties. Permission to reproduce this third-party content must be obtained from these third-parties directly.When citing this work, please include a reference to the DOI (10.1017/ 9781316423202). First published 2016Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library isbn 978-1-107-12816-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.Every effort has been made to secure necessary permissions to reproduce copyright material in this work, though in some cases it has proved impossible to trace copyright holders. If any omissions are broughttoournotice,wewillbehappyto include appropriate acknowledgements in a subsequent edition.

Recent scholarship on eighteenth‐century women's poetry

“…Other women poets deliberately chose to eschew print in favour of sociable manuscript production. Whelan's (2011Whelan's ( , 2015 research into nonconformist women's poetry-alongside broader literary studies by Bigold (2013), Schellenberg (2016) and Williams (2017)-demonstrates that many women writers (and their male friends) habitually composed manuscript verse for artistic experimentation, personal fulfilment, and to entertain and expand their social networks. Informative models for locating and interpreting women's manuscript poetry have emerged (e.g., Londry, 2004a;Runge, 2006), which convey just how much archival material remains unstudied, whilst highlighting that women's poetic activities extended beyond authorship to include acts of 'collecting, selecting, transcribing, editing, juxtaposing, endorsing and exchanging poems' (Hackett, 2013, p. 131).…”

Print, Manuscript, and Oral Literary Cultures: The Case of Eighteenth-Century Irish Song

“…More recently, Betty Schellenberg and James Woolley have both emphasized the importance of manuscript culture to the eighteenth century, specifically in relation to the literary and cultural work of coteries (including the Bluestockings) and to our studies of Swift, respectively. 6 An engagement with manuscript material is also obviously important as we push beyond canonical figures: Andrew Carpenter's edition of the manuscript poems of Olivia Elder offers a recent example, as does Vincent Morley's full-length study of Irish-language poetry in the eighteenth century. 7 The ternary nexus of print, manuscript, and oral modes has thus far focused almost exclusively in our period on studies of theater and song, particularly of ballads: articles by Paula McDowell and Ruth Perry on Scottish and English ballads exemplify this interest.…”

‘The Astronomic Muse’: Charles Burney and Astronomy

“…Drawing on archival sources, I examine the social process of the poem's creation in the light of new work on literary sociability, particularly Betty Schellenberg's recognition 'that for […] successful professionals, one of their principal investments of time and social capital, and seemingly one of their sources of greatest pride, was in their active membership in a literary coterie', which she defines as 'a select group of individuals linked by ties of friendship founded upon, or deepened by, mutual encouragement to original composition; the production and exchange of manuscript materials to celebrate the group and further its members' interests; and the criticism of one another's work and of shared reading materials'. 11 Astronomy existed for at least a decade as an unstable text within what Hilary Havens terms 'an intricate series of networks' familial, literary, scientific and aristocratic. 12 Late Georgian literary culture, Tim Fulford claims, 'was undergoing a series of rapid transformations that altered the status and role of authors', so that 'a capitalized publishing market served an expanded reading public and scores of new newspapers, journals and magazines traded in the personalwhether by hostile reviews that attacked an author's private character, or by gossip about literary celebrities'.…”

“…14 That Burney's steady progress from bound apprentice to man of letters was due to charm as well as talent and energy, he acknowledged late in life: 'I may be said to have been in the great world ever since I went first to Wilbury with M r Greville w ch is now near 60 years -& though only a Musician, I was never Sent to the 2 d table'. 15 Schellenberg notes that 'eighteenth-century coteries […] became the means by which middling men and women were enabled to cross class barriers through the personal connections forged by correspondence and literary exchange', 16 a process embodied by Burney, whom astronomy assisted in transcending barriers. His social status was middling, his income precarious, his friendships necessarily transactional.…”

“…67 This month, Burney attended a dinner party given by Mrs Crewe at which distinguished guests, including William Windham and George Canning, were to take turns reading portions of their recent scribal productions; hence, one of the 'manuscript exchanging coteries' that Schellenberg shows were 'an integral and influential element of literary culture in eighteenth-century Britain'. 68 'The lot fell on me to begin', Burney recorded, boasting how, when he had finished reading Book 1 of Astronomy, the others declined to follow, demanding instead 'another of your books'. 69 Burney read three books of his poem and no one else read at all.…”