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William Creech and John Boyle: The Classics Spread Across Scotland

Thomas F. Bonnell

in The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810

This chapter looks at the careers of William Creech and John Boyle, and examines how the English Classics spread across Scotland. For 40 years, Creech was the chief publisher in Edinburgh. Creech ... More

This chapter looks at the careers of William Creech and John Boyle, and examines how the English Classics spread across Scotland. For 40 years, Creech was the chief publisher in Edinburgh. Creech carried on by far the most extensive bookselling concern in Scotland, publishing the writings of many of the distinguished men who adorned Scottish literature at the close of the eighteenth century. His works include the Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces, and British Poets. When Francis Douglas faded from the scene in the 1760s, Aberdeen fell to John Boyle. His forty-four titles account for almost half the books printed in Aberdeen from 1771 to 1780. Boyle's formulation of intrinsic worth in the Aberdeen collection embraces ‘all that is valuable of the whole English poets’. Among his famous works is A Collection of the English Poets. The chapter argues that such productions of English classics reflected credit on Scotland.Less

“Everything Has a Schedule”: Some Trees

Jesse Zuba

in The First Book: Twentieth-Century Poetic Careers in America

This chapter offers an interpretation of one of the most remarkable debut collections ever selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award—Some Trees by John Ashbery. The reputation of the book ... More

This chapter offers an interpretation of one of the most remarkable debut collections ever selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award—Some Trees by John Ashbery. The reputation of the book as an unconventional debut has dominated the critical response to it, from the early, largely negative judgments by critics such as William Arrowsmith and Donald Hall, to more recent attempts to revalue it by Marjorie Perloff, Vernon Shetley, David Lehman, and others. The chapter argues that Some Trees has been misread both by its detractors and defenders, who tend to stress the ways in which the poems resist interpretation while ignoring many of the ways in which they encourage and support it.Less

Stooping to Conquer: Johnsonian Biography

Freya Johnston

in Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking 1709-1791

This chapter interprets some of Johnson's Lives of the Poets as non-satirical, corrective responses to Pope's Peri Bathous and The Dunciad. Richard Blackmore, for instance, ‘Father of the Bathos’ and ... More

This chapter interprets some of Johnson's Lives of the Poets as non-satirical, corrective responses to Pope's Peri Bathous and The Dunciad. Richard Blackmore, for instance, ‘Father of the Bathos’ and loudest of the braying dunces, gains a moral advantage over the author who had ridiculed him. In the Lives, it is shown that Johnson articulated his preference for a Christian scale of values. Also elicited are the competing senses of 18th-century ‘condescension’ as a good and as a bad quality, dependent on whether the writer has Christian or classical precedents in mind. It teases out the motives behind Johnson's solicitous reactions to Blackmore and to Isaac Watts. The chapter concludes by discussing his commemoration of a semi-literate, indigent physician, ‘On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet’: an example of his distinctive art of sinking.Less

Shakespeare and the Renaissance Ovid

Jonathan Bate

in Shakespeare and Ovid

This chapter examines the influence of Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) on the literary writings of William Shakespeare. Ovid's inspiration of Shakespeare was first recognized in 1598 when ... More

This chapter examines the influence of Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) on the literary writings of William Shakespeare. Ovid's inspiration of Shakespeare was first recognized in 1598 when Francis Meres undertook an exercise in the art of simile titled ‘A comparative Discourse of the English Poets with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets’. In addition to the similarity of methods of composition observed by Meres, there are also other obvious points of similarity between the works of Ovid and Shakespeare. These include their rewriting of inherited stories into a completely new one and their refusal to submit to the decorum of genre.Less

John Bell's Little Trifling Edition Revisited

Thomas F. Bonnell

in The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810

This chapter discusses the contributions of John Bell to publishing and examines some practices prevalent at the time such as piracy and reprinting. Bell invoked the admired edition of the Latin ... More

This chapter discusses the contributions of John Bell to publishing and examines some practices prevalent at the time such as piracy and reprinting. Bell invoked the admired edition of the Latin classics by Elzevir. His literature-for-the-masses volume, Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill, was published from 1777 to 1783. Each volume cost just six shillings, at a time when similar volumes usually cost multiple times that. The drawings and illustrations with which Bell adorned his publications influenced later publishers, as did his abandonment of the long s. Most notable, perhaps, was Bell's joint-stock organization of his publishing company, which defied the trade — forty dominant publishing companies — in order to establish a monopoly on the best publications. The rest of the chapter examines the progress of piracy and the trade war in the reprinting industry.Less

Robert Anderson's Comprehensive View of English Poetry

Thomas F. Bonnell

in The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810

This chapter discusses Robert Anderson's comprehensive view of English poetry. Anderson was the first non-bookseller to wield much editorial authority over a multi-volume poetry collection. His ... More

This chapter discusses Robert Anderson's comprehensive view of English poetry. Anderson was the first non-bookseller to wield much editorial authority over a multi-volume poetry collection. His publishers transformed the enterprise by using royal octavo volumes printed in double columns. The first section of the chapter looks into the relationship between publisher and editor, citing examples in the workplace of Mundell and Son. The second section describes the tasks of Anderson when he became editor. It notes that biographies were Anderson's most time-consuming responsibility. The third section describes Anderson's task of publication and dissemination as similar to collecting scattered gems and associating them for the benefit of the audience. The fourth section discusses the goal of Mundell and Son to publish the cheapest and most perfect edition of the British Poets. The fifth section discusses Anderson's resolve on completing his editorial tasks.Less

Breathing Modern Life into the Quijote: Spanish and Southern Regeneration in the New Century

Brittany Powell Kennedy

in Between Distant Modernities: Performing Exceptionality in Francoist Spain and the Jim Crow South

This chapter seeks to explain a quixotism resulting from a perceived loss of national authenticity at the turn of the twentieth century, looking at the “lovable loser” Don Quijote, whose idealism and ... More

This chapter seeks to explain a quixotism resulting from a perceived loss of national authenticity at the turn of the twentieth century, looking at the “lovable loser” Don Quijote, whose idealism and devotion to a perceived loss of “tradition” becomes a philosophical and aesthetic model for performativity in Spain and the South as the so-called Generation of ’98 writers in Spain and the Fugitive poets and Nashville Agrarians in the South write poetry and philosophy that conceptualize a perceived loss of a performed Spanish and Southern tradition as they cope with said loss within modernity.Less

John Sharpe and Alexander Chalmers: A Body of Standard English Poetry

Thomas F. Bonnell

in The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810

In 1805, as Cooke brought his project to an end, John Sharpe started a series called The Works of the British Poets, extending to nearly 50 years an unbroken chain of continuity: from 1765 to 1812, ... More

In 1805, as Cooke brought his project to an end, John Sharpe started a series called The Works of the British Poets, extending to nearly 50 years an unbroken chain of continuity: from 1765 to 1812, from Foulis through Sharpe. An edition of Shakespeare paved the way for ‘Sharpe's Edition of The British Theatre’. He also produced ‘British Classics’ and ‘Sharpe's Select Edition of the British Prose Writers’. Sharpe's edition moved the series forward, from a canonical collection of English verse into a full supplementary anthology of minor verse and finally the Greek and Roman classics in translation. The third section of the chapter looks at engravings and vignettes, and examines the marketing logic behind them. The last part of the chapter discusses Alexander Chalmers, publisher of A General Biographical Dictionary, Glossary to Shakespeare, an edition of George Steevens's Shakespeare, and British Essayists.Less

Introduction

Richard Terry

in Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past: 1660-1781

Concentrating on the period between 1660 and 1781, this book tells how the English literary past was made. ‘Making the past’ indicates a range of scholarly or imaginative activities. Included in this ... More

Concentrating on the period between 1660 and 1781, this book tells how the English literary past was made. ‘Making the past’ indicates a range of scholarly or imaginative activities. Included in this book is a short discussion of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, the most important marmoreal shrine for the consecration of literary worthies. Also discussed are a wide range of poetic genres that proved auspicious for recitals of the literary past: the funeral elegy, the progress-of-poesy poem and the session-of-the-poets poem. When it comes to prose writings, works which propound or foster versions of the literary past include tomes of antiquarian recovery, taste-forming anthologies, and the rhetorical, grammatical, and elocutionary primers, often incorporating literary gobbets, which were used in schools and academies. This book also argues for an earlier inauguration of the canon than has recently been fashionable, and looks at the canonical credentials of women writers.Less

Johnson's Lives of the Poets

Richard Terry

in Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past: 1660-1781

There is no doubt that Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are a significant contribution to the scripting of the English poetic past. Latterly, however, there has been a tendency for their impact to ... More

There is no doubt that Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are a significant contribution to the scripting of the English poetic past. Latterly, however, there has been a tendency for their impact to be distorted or overstated. Martha Woodmansee, for example, has claimed not untypically that the ‘Lives of the Poets contributed decisively to the differentiation of ‘authoring’ from ordinary literary labour by establishing a pantheon of great authors whose ‘works’ differ qualitatively from the sea of mere writing’. Not only is their impact a ‘decisive’ one, but the Lives also get credited with putting in place a construct that had not previously existed (‘establishing a canon…’). The role of the Lives is not merely distinct from Woodmansee's but more nearly the opposite of it. This chapter explores the context and achievement of Johnson's Lives by taking note of their appearance in accompaniment to a serial anthology, by considering the cultural role of such large-scale poetic anthologies, and by addressing Johnson's particular contribution to the genre of literary biography.Less

Responses to Symonds

Gideon Nisbet

in Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805-1929

This chapter traces the continuing contestation of the Anthology in the public sphere from 1893 to 1914. The key figure is J. W. Mackail, who distilled the Anthology to a canonic 500 ‘best’ poems in ... More

This chapter traces the continuing contestation of the Anthology in the public sphere from 1893 to 1914. The key figure is J. W. Mackail, who distilled the Anthology to a canonic 500 ‘best’ poems in an edition-with-translation of 1894, Select Epigrams. Cephalas's structure was rejected for twelve new thematic ‘Chapters’, devised by Mackail but billed as the natural categories of a timeless human experience. Select Epigrams presented this dodecalogy as a quasi-epic, quasi-religious document: ‘the book of Greek life’, of which the star author was Simonides. With its emphasis on family and piety, and rhetoric of Liberal Imperialism, Select Epigrams was seized upon as the definitive Anthology for modernity. At the same time, though, a parallel tradition of dissident epigram-work, inspired by Symonds and inflected by Wilde, was making the most of the opportunities now made available by the burgeoning small press movement.Less

Introduction

in A Gallery to Play to: The Story of the Mersey Poets

This book focuses on the literary and social identity of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten – also known as the Mersey Poets – whose work was considered irreverent and sardonic, and ... More

This book focuses on the literary and social identity of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten – also known as the Mersey Poets – whose work was considered irreverent and sardonic, and occupied a central niche in twentieth-century British poetry, symbolising the pop poetry movement of the period. The Mersey Poets first shot to prominence in 1967, when Tony Richardson of Penguin Books featured them in the highly prestigious Penguin Modern Poets series. The book, titled The Mersey Sound would be a big break for the three Liverpool poets. They had distinct and widely differing achievements: McGough was known for his economy, edge, and unblinkered concerns; Henri for his preserving benevolence; and Patten for his straight-talking, sheer metaphysical charge.Less

Conclusion

Edmund Stewart

in Greek Tragedy on the Move: The Birth of a Panhellenic Art Form c.500–300 BC

Tragedy’s dissemination may be said to be, in its nature, a complex and continuous process brought about through performance and re-performance at Panhellenic gatherings. Tragedy as a genre emerged ... More

Tragedy’s dissemination may be said to be, in its nature, a complex and continuous process brought about through performance and re-performance at Panhellenic gatherings. Tragedy as a genre emerged from, and was part of, a Panhellenic song culture shaped by frequent travel, competition, and exchange. By the time something that could be termed tragedy appeared at the end of the sixth century, the Greeks were already connected by a complex system of overlapping networks. Despite the prominence of particular cities, such as Athens and Sparta, the Greeks possessed no one political or cultural centre. Festivals, at Athens and elsewhere, were important places for Greeks to gather and compete. From the beginning, individual tragic poets and actors worked hard to make their plays and performances known everywhere and known forever.Less