https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] THE PUBLICATION OF THE POETRY OF JOHN WILMOT EARL OF ROCHESTER FROM 1680 TO 1728 James McGhee TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. University of Glasgow Department of English Literature May 1991. <£> James McGhee 1991. 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Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 in memory of 3P.A.U31* STRATHEARN (1952-89) GOUSTTEJSI T'2E3 VOLUME I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i SUMMARY ii INTRODUCTION iii CHAPTER 1 License and Licentiousness: Rochester's Poems and Late Seventeenth-Century Criminal Prosecutions 1 CHAPTER 2 The Cabinet of the Severest Matron: Tonson's 1691 text of Rochester 20 CHAPTER 3 Cancellation and Castration: Two Rochester Songs 42 CHAPTER 4 Self-Censorship and Copyright: Tonson's Text of 'Fair Cloris in a Piggsty lay' 76 CHAPTER 5 The Cabinet of Love: 'Curlicism', Copyright and the C-series of Rochester's Poems 93 CHAPTER 6 Obscene Libel and the Language of Rochester's Poems 129 NOTES TO CHAPTERS 1-6 146 VOLUME II PREFATORY NOTE TO VOLUME II 1 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTIONS 3 APPENDIX: TEXTS 164 LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED 208 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The Scottish Education Department provided me with a studentship which enabled me to pursue my research. I am indebted to my supervisor Paddy Lyons, who first introduced me to Rochester's poetry, for his guidance and support throughout this proj ect. My work has drawn on the resources of many libraries: Glasgow University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Bodleian Library, the Royal Library, Copenhagen, the Huntington Library, Princeton University Library, and the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Kansas. The staff at these libraries have helped me with kindness and knowledge. Particular thanks are due to Kevin Fromings of the British Library Preservation Service, Thomas V. Lange, assistant curator at the Huntington Library, and Robin Adams of Glasgow University Library. Early versions of my work on Andrew Thorncome and on Jacob Tonson were presented at the graduate seminar of the department of English Language, Glasgow University, and at the staff seminar of the department of English, University College, London, where I had useful feedback from, among others, Christian Kay and Henry Woudhuysen. At the Biographies Research Unit of Glasgow University, David Bank provided a useful stimulus towards computer literacy; at the hand press of Stirling University, John Drakakis introduced me to the art and mystery of printing. Helen Lambert's encouragement and support helped to ensure that these two volumes became a material reality. Guy Hamilton and the late Billy Linworth gave generously of their time and lightened the burden of proofreading. My greatest debt is acknowledged in the dedication of this thesis. SUMMARY This thesis examines the publication of Rochester's poems from their entry into print in 1680 to the first successful King's Bench prosecution for obscene libel in 1728. It combines critical readings of particular poems with detailed bibliographical analysis of the printing processes that produced them. Historical investigation of the changes that took place in publishing and press-control during this period explain the processes of transformation undergone by the poems in their successive reprintings. Volume II provides a catalogue of early editions of Rochester's poems compiled according to principles of bibliographical description. In the appendix to Volume II, transcriptions of poems from early editions are laid out in a parallel text arrangement. Volume I presents the development of the 3 main series of Rochester editions in terms of publishing history and history of law. Chapter 1 examines different texts of Rochester's The Imperfect Enjoyment in the context of late seventeenth-century press-control, with particular reference to the Licensing Act and the increase in lower-court prosecutions for obscenity. Chapters 2 to 4 examinejjacob Tonson's series of Rochester editions, studying their bibliographical and textual composition and connecting the alterations carried out on 3 poems — 'Love a Woman! y'are an Ass', To A Lady, in A Letter, and 'Fair Cloris in a Piggsty lay'— with Tonson's contribution to the formation of the 1710 Copyright Act. The last two chapters concentrate on the early eighteenth-century editions of Edmund Curll, and analyse the changes that took place in the texts of the Satyr ('Were I (who to my cost already am)'), The Imperfect Enjoyment and A Ramble in Saint James's Parke. This analysis of the early printed texts of Rochester's poems reveals the extent to which they were transformed by changing conditions of press-control, and uncovers the contribution Rochester's poems made to the evolution of modern obscenity law. IHTRODUCTIOH. Rochester's poems were written, not for publication in print, but for manuscript circulation among the Earl's friends. By the time of his death in the summgfer of 1680, Rochester's poems were held in high esteem by a wide readership that included the bourgeois critics of the coffee-houses as well as the literary cognoscenti of the court. But at this stage, Rochester's reputation as a poet rested on manuscript copies of his work rather than printed texts. There was no book. This thesis is concerned with the entry of Rochester's poems into print. My point of departure is the first printed collection of the poems that appeared shortly after Rochester's death. By examining in detail 3 very different versions of Rochester's work that circulated in print over the next 50 years, this thesis contributes to our understanding not only of the transformations undergone by the texts of a particular poet over a particular period of time, but also of the changes that took place in the conditions of writing and publishing at a crucial point in English history. My approach, then, reverses the usual direction of enquiry followed by textual criticism. Where textual criticism has been concerned with reconstructing what the author actually wrote Cor intended to write), my concern is with the way in which texts are re-written in the course of publication. Where post-war editors of Rochester have struggled through the maze of manuscript material in search of an endlessly-receding 'ideal text', my attention has been concentrated on examining the successive mutation of printed texts long after they left Rochester's hands. Much of the material that has proved useful for the present enquiry would have been discounted as irrelevant and corrupt by the platonic tradition of scholarship before Derrida. Rather than looking back towards that point of origin where the pure text glimmers in the distance, my gaze is turned towards the opposite horizon, looking forward across a prospect of texts endlessly mutating, reproducing and reprinting, down to the present day. lit Introduction. By reversing the retrospective direction of textual enquiry, some of the problems of the platonic tradition can be avoided. The problem of intentionality has reached crisis proportions in recent textual criticism. 20 years ago, James Thorpe could announce with confidence that 'the ideal of textual criticism is to present the text which the author intended'1. Since then, a bewildering fragmentation of intention has taken place, with textual critics attempting to distinguish between 'programmatic intention', 'active intention' and 'final intention': the fracturing of authorial intention in textual criticism parallels the dismantling of the single unified subject in other disciplines2. In the present area of study, the problem of intentionality has been made all the more acute by the absence of any authorising gesture on the part of Rochester. My solution has been to examine these texts as collaborative efforts: Rochester was only one member of a changing, shadowy cast of contributing writers. The poems assembled under his name bear the traces of re-writing by manuscript copyists, publishers, compositors, editors; some editions invite the reader to contribute to the text. These are indeed 'Poems by Several Hands'. Volume II of this thesis provides two different kinds of material produced by this approach. A catalogue of editions published in the 50 years after Rochester's death describes the physical production of the poems. Bibliographical analysis enables an excavation of the manufacturing processes behind the words on the page; contents are described in detail in order to make apparent the selection and ordering of the poems in different editions. Once again, the vagaries of Rochester's publication history sabotage the latent platonism of the scholarly endeavour: the extremely low survival-rate of editions makes it impossible to reconstruct an 'ideal copy' according to the classic principles of bibliographical description.