LITERARY COTERIES AND THE MAKING OF MODERN PRINT CULTURE 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 demon- strate how scribal modes shaped modern literary production. betty a. schellenberg is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada, where she is a founding member of the Print Culture group and winner of a Dean’s Medal for Excellence. She has edited, for The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, the volume of Correspondence Primarily on Sir Charles Grandison (1750–1754), which appeared in 2015. Her other books are The Professionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2005), Reconsidering the Bluestockings (2003, co-edited with Nicole Pohl), Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel (1996, co-edited with Paul Budra), and The Conversational Circle: Rereading the English Novel, 1740–1775 (1998). This title is available as Open Access at 10.1017/ 9781316423202. LITERARY COTERIES AND THE MAKING OF MODERN PRINT CULTURE 1740–1790 BETTY A. SCHELLENBERG Simon Fraser University, Canada University Printing House, Cambridge cb28bs,UnitedKingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107128163 © Betty A. Schellenberg 2016 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 non- commercial 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/4.0 All 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). 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Contents List of figures page vi List of tables viii Acknowledgments ix List of abbreviations xi Introduction: The literary coterie in the eighteenth-century media landscape 1 1 Wrest Park and North End: two mid-century coteries 25 2 Formation, fame, and patronage: the Montagu–Lyttelton coterie 60 3 Identity and influence from coterie to print: Carter, Chapone, and the Shenstone–Dodsley collaboration 92 4 Memorializing a coterie life in print: the case of William Shenstone 123 5 “This new species of mischief”: Montagu, Johnson, and the quarrel over character 153 6 Transmediations: marketing the coterie traveler 181 7 Literary sociability in the eighteenth-century personal miscellany 205 Conclusion 237 Notes 240 Bibliography 290 Index 302 v Figures 1.1 John Roque, Plan of Wrest Park, 1735. Bedfordshire & Luton page 28 Archives Service (Z50/104/1). 1.2 Wrestiana, “A Mock-Heroic Historical Romance,” p. 187 (facsimile 33 reproduction). Bedfordshire & Luton Archives Service (FAC 11/2). The location of the original is unknown. 1.3 Susanna Highmore, “Richardson reading the MS History of Sir 48 Cha. Grandison at North End,” c. 1753. Reproduced with permission of the Pierpont Morgan Library. 2.1 Katherine Read, Elizabeth Carter,c.1765. Reproduced by courtesy 64 of the Trustees of Dr Johnson’s House. 2.2 Artist unknown, George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton,c.1756. 65 © National Portrait Gallery, London. 3.1 William Shenstone, “The Sanctuary” and illustration of ruined 105 priory gate, from illustrated manuscript of poems. Wellesley College Library, Special Collections. 3.2 William Shenstone, “The King-fisher,” stanzas 5 and 6 and 109 illustration, from illustrated manuscript of poems. Wellesley College Library, Special Collections. 3.3 Artist unknown (possibly traced from William Lowe and keyed in 114 Robert Dodsley’s hand), a plan of the Leasowes, accompanying Joseph Spence, “The Round of Mr Shenstone’s Paradise.” The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (HM 30312). 4.1 William Shenstone, The Works in Verse and Prose of William 129 Shenstone, Esq.(1764), title page. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (RB 106624). 5.1 Fashion plate and foldout plate of The Nine Living Muses of Great 158 Britain, after Richard Samuel, in The Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum-Book for 1778 [1777?]. Used with permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library (shelfmark: 193–495q). vi List of figures vii 5.2 James Barry, “The Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts,” 166 from A Series of Etchings by James Barry, Esq. from his ...Paintings in the Great Room of the Society of Arts (1792). © Tate, London 2015. 6.1 Thomas Gray, A Supplement to the Tour through Great-Britain, 201 containing a Catalogue ...By the Late Mr. Gray, Author of the Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard, etc.(1787). The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (RB 304705). 7.1 Mary Capell, Commonplace Book, “To a Lady on her love of 215 Poetry. June 8, 1747. By Mr. C. Y—e.” Reproduced with the permission of Special Collections, Leeds University Library (Ms Lt 119, ff. 100v-101). 7.2 Eliza Chapman, “Poetry, Selected & Original. 1788 & 1789,” 228 frontispiece. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Bodl. Ms. Montagu e.14). 7.3 Eliza Chapman, “Poetry, Selected & Original. 1788 & 1789,” 230 ff. 49v-50. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Bodl. Ms. Montagu e.14). Tables 4.1 Shenstone coterie publications issued by the Dodsley firm, 1764f. page 133 4.2 A survey of periodical references to Shenstone or the Leasowes, 138 1749–1874. viii Acknowledgments A very early version of some of this book’s arguments appeared in a chapter entitled “‘The Society of Agreeable and Worthy Companions’: Bookishness and Manuscript Culture after 1750,” in Ina Ferris and Paul Keen, eds., Bookish Histories: Books, Literature, and Commercial Modernity, 1700–1900 (Houndmills and NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 213–31, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan. A penultimate version of my discussions of Hester Chapone’s and Catherine Talbot’s coterie lives, distributed through Chapters 1–3, was published as “Coterie Fame, Media Choice and the Writing Lives of Hester Mulso Chapone and Catherine Talbot,” Women’s Writing 21 (2014), pp. 316–36, and is repub- lished with the permission of Taylor & Francis Group (www.tandfonline .com). Much of Chapter 7 first appeared in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Volume 44, Issue 2, 2011, pages 203–21. Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Publications Fund, and the SFU Department of English for generously supporting the archival research and manuscript preparation for this book. A series of outstanding research assistants watched over the project’s details and tied up loose ends: thank you to Emma Pink, Julie Karey, Jillian Snyder, Faith Dickens, Sarah Creel, David Weston, and Meghan Brennan, as well as to Maureen Curtin, who kept it all straight, as usual. Linda Bree, the longsuffering Anna Bond, and all the editorial staff at Cambridge University Press shepherded the completed manuscript through the evaluation and production stages with grace and care. Librarians, archivists, and staff at the Huntington Library, the British Library, the University of Leeds, the Bodleian Library, the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives