Early Modern Authorship and the Editorial Tradition


Book Description

This volume adds a new dimension to authorship studies by linking the editorial tradition to the transformative reception of early modern authors and their works across time. Aleida Auld argues that the editorial tradition provides privileged access to the reception of early modern literature, informing our understanding of certain reconfigurations and sometimes helping to produce them between their time and our own. At stake are reconfigurations of oeuvre and authorship, the relationship between the author and work, the relationship between authors, and the author’s own role in establishing an editorial tradition. Ultimately, this study recognizes that the editorial tradition is a stabilizing force while asserting that it may also be a source of strange and provocative reconceptions of early modern authors and their works in the present day. Scholars and students of early modern literature will benefit from this approach to editing as a form of reception that encompasses all the editorial decisions that are necessary to ‘put forth’ a text.




British Museum


Book Description




The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709-1875


Book Description

A complete study of the history and tradition of illustrated editions of Shakespeare, containing 167 illustrative images from major editions.




Shakespeare in Print


Book Description

Described by the TLS as 'a formidable bibliographical achievement ... destined to become a key reference work for Shakespeareans', Shakespeare in Print is now issued in a revised and expanded edition offering a wealth of new material, including a chapter which maps the history of digital editions from the earliest computer-generated texts to the very latest digital resources. Murphy's narrative offers a masterful overview of the history of Shakespeare publishing and editing, teasing out the greater cultural significance of the ways in which the plays and poems have been disseminated and received over the centuries from Shakespeare's time to our own. The opening chapters have been completely rewritten to offer close engagement with the careers of the network of publishers and printers who first brought Shakespeare to print, additional material has been added to all chapters, and the chronological appendix has been updated and expanded.




Canonising Shakespeare


Book Description

Canonising Shakespeare offers the first comprehensive reassessment of Shakespeare's afterlife as a print phenomenon, demonstrating the crucial role that the book trade played in his rise to cultural pre-eminence. 1640–1740 was the period in which Shakespeare's canon was determined, in which the poems resumed their place alongside the plays in print, and in which artisans and named editors crafted a new, contemporary Shakespeare for Restoration and eighteenth-century consumers. A team of international contributors highlight the impact of individual booksellers, printers, publishers and editors on the Shakespearean text, the books in which it was presented, and the ways in which it was promoted. From radical adaptations of the Sonnets to new characters in plays, and from elegant subscription volumes to cheap editions churned out by feuding publishers, this period was marked by eclecticism, contradiction and innovation as stationers looked to the past and the future to create a Shakespeare for their own times.




Nine Lives of William Shakespeare


Book Description

Acclaimed as the greatest dramatist of all time, William Shakespeare needs little introduction. Or does he? Going beyond Shakespeare the writer and actor, Graham Holderness explores the fact and fiction, tradition and myth, surrounding Shakespeare's life. Combining biography and fictional narrative, Holderness takes a fresh critical approach to the problem of piecing together a definitive account of Shakespeare's life and work from scant historical information. Instead, this study builds upon and examines the many theories that surround the life of this well-known, yet remarkably unknown man. Nine Shakespeares are presented: writer, player, butcher boy, businessman, husband, friend, lover, Catholic and portrait. By carefully critiquing these biographies and reimagining these nine men, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare creates a unique picture of how this playwright became Shakespeare as he is understood today. Shakespeare Now! is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source – the most living language imaginable – and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.




The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment brings together 40 of the most important scholars and intellectuals writing on the subject today. Extending the purview of feminist criticism, it offers an intersectional paradigm for considering representations of gender in the context of race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and religion. In addition to sophisticated textual analysis drawing on the methods of historicism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and posthumanism, a team of international experts discuss Shakespeare's life, contemporary editing practices, and performance of his plays on stage, on screen, and in the classroom. This theoretically sophisticated yet elegantly written Handbook includes an editor's Introduction that provides a comprehensive overview of current debates.