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This chapter examines the origins of Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. It suggests that serious work on Percy's collection started after his September 1760 meeting with poet William Shenstone and publisher Robert Dodsley. This meeting inspired Percy and Shenstone to produce two books within five years. The first was Five Pieces of runic Poetry published in 1763 and the second, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in 1765. Both books were published by Dodsley's publishing company.

This chapter examines the early history and the preparations made by Thomas Percy for his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. It suggests Percy's putative anthology was influenced by two original materials: Samuel Pepys' collection of 17th century broadsides and Percy's own collection of 18th century broadsides. Percy started transcribing Pepys' broadside ballads in August 1761 and the following month he began to plan the publication of the Reliques. His editorial method was based on the relationship between oral and literary sources. This chapter also discusses the problems encountered by Percy in the printing of the Reliques.

This chapter examines the efforts of Stephen Spender, Manuel Altolaguirre, and several of their associates to create a European anti-fascist poetic community for which the bonds between the Auden Generation and the Spanish Generation of ’27 would be central. The frames for this work are the claims by Ortega, in several articles in English, and Altolaguirre, in his journal 1616: English and Spanish Poetry, that England and Spain shared a unique history that compelled cooperation; the attempts, led primarily by Spender, to channel Spanish voices of the conflict through British literary culture; and the battles over the political and cultural significance of Lorca’s assassination. Spender, one of Lorca’s earliest translators, found himself defending his view of the Spaniard’s mutable, populist figure against its misappropriation. With the aid of two Spanish collaborators, Spender influentially characterized him instead as an apolitical Spanish-European poet, and he edited the volume Poems for Spain, which intercalated British and Spanish voices on the war. At the same time, while Poems for Spain evinces the mutual influences of two literary generations, its publication in March 1939, when Franco’s victory was ensured, made it an elegy for the lost Republic. The awkward and ultimately failed literary endeavors taken up in this chapter underwent significant revisions both in Spender’s poetry and in later translations of Lorca.

This chapter examines the historical background of the printing of Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. The printing of the Reliques took James Dodsley two and a half years to finish. This chapter explores the intersection of the texts of Percy's different literary projects in the light of renewed advice from William Shenstone regarding the printing of the Reliques, and Percy's spiralling circle of correspondents. It also highlights the extant proofs and revisions made by Percy prior to the actual printing of the Reliques.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. This three-volume collection of ballads, songs, sonnets, and romances is one of the finest examples of the antiquarian tendency in later 18th century English poetry. This book explores Percy's research work for his book and explains his working method to show how his methodological assumptions influenced the late-18th century literary antiquarianism.

This chapter examines the ballads contained in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which was published in 1765. Though Percy's collection includes sonnets, songs, and lyrics, its contents were mostly old ballads. His working title for the collection was A Collection of Old Ballads and one of his principal printed sources was a three-volume edition of the same title. The old ballads in Percy's collection cover the subjects of border wars, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and traditional pageantry. Percy's adviser in the compilation of the ballads was William Shenstone.

This chapter examines the influence of Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry on English Romanticism. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge made public praise of the Reliques and admitted that their collaboration Lyrical Ballads was indebted to Percy. Thomas Evans based his Old Ballads, Historical and Narrative on Percy's works and Walter Scott collected in explicit homage to the Reliques. This chapter suggests that the faults in the Reliques made it irresistible to many readers who shared an eagerness to annotate and improve Percy's edition.