DOCSLIB.ORG

Download (8MB)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Download (8MB) 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. ProQuest Number: 10984116 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10984116 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. 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.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Pilgrimage Through English History and Culture (F-L)
    Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Faculty Publications 2009-05-01 A Pilgrimage Through English History and Culture (F-L) Gary P. Gillum [email protected] Susan Wheelwright O'Connor Alexa Hysi Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub Part of the English Language and Literature Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Gillum, Gary P.; O'Connor, Susan Wheelwright; and Hysi, Alexa, "A Pilgrimage Through English History and Culture (F-L)" (2009). Faculty Publications. 12. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/12 This Other is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 833 FAIRFAX, JOHN, 1623-1700. Rare 922.542 St62f 1681 Presbýteros diples times axios, or, The true dignity of St. Paul's elder, exemplified in the life of that reverend, holy, zealous, and faithful servant, and minister of Jesus Christ Mr. Owne Stockton ... : with a collection of his observations, experiences and evidences recorded by his own hand : to which is added his funeral sermon / by John Fairfax. London : Printed by H.H. for Tho. Parkhurst at the Sign of the Bible and Three Crowns, at the lower end of Cheapside, 1681. Description: [12], 196, [20] p. ; 15 cm. References: Wing F 129. Subjects: Stockton, Owen, 1630-1680. Notes: Title enclosed within double line rule border. "Mors Triumphata; or The Saints Victory over Death; Opened in a Funeral Sermon ... " has special title page. 834 FAIRFAX, THOMAS FAIRFAX, Baron, 1612-1671.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyrighted Material
    BLBK574-01 BLBK574-Stuart Printer: Yet to Come August 13, 2015 11:51 Trim: 244mm × 170mm Part I Life and Background COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL 25 BLBK574-01 BLBK574-Stuart Printer: Yet to Come August 13, 2015 11:51 Trim: 244mm × 170mm 26 BLBK574-01 BLBK574-Stuart Printer: Yet to Come August 13, 2015 11:51 Trim: 244mm × 170mm 1 Locke’s Life MARK GOLDIE When John Locke was born, in 1632, England’s universities were dominated by Scholastic Aristotelianism, its authors obliged to submit their books to censors, its people ruled by a monarch who had ceased to call parliaments, and its worshippers punished if they did not conform to the established Church. When he died, in 1704, England had a burgeoning American and oceanic empire, its armies were crushing the Continental superpower France, its regime was a parliamentary monarchy, its universities were coming to terms with Newton’s Principia, its coffee houses were bestrewn with uncensored print, and Trinitarian Protestants could worship as they chose. During Locke’s childhood, the English overthrew and executed one Stuart monarch, and, in his middle age, deposed another. Locke was both a witness and an agent of England’s transformations, and his own life, like his country’s, turned upon the axis of 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution. Before then, he was obscure and unpublished, and for some years an exile; afterwards, he was famous and pro- lific. In his annus mirabilis, 1689, he published his cardinal work of epistemology, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, his epitome of the Whig theory of liberty and revolution, Two Treatises of Government, and his critique of religious coercion, ALet- ter Concerning Toleration.
    [Show full text]
  • John Locke As a Reader of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan: a New Manuscript
    John Locke as a Reader of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan: A New Manuscript* Felix Waldmann University of Cambridge In the summer of 2019, several newspapers announced the discovery of John Milton’s personal copy of Shakespeare’s first folio. The copy, preserved in the Free Library of Philadelphia, had previously attracted attention for its re- markable annotations in the hand of an unidentifiable early owner. But it was only when a scholar noticed the similarity of the annotator’s hand with Milton’s that the association was wagered. As the Milton scholar William Poole noted in The Guardian: “It was, until a few days ago, simply too much to hope that Milton’s own copy of Shakespeare might have survived.” Yet it had survived, and in plain sight.1 The implications of the discovery are now the product of considerable scholarship by specialists in early modern literature, but its reper- cussions can be felt in neighboring disciplines, where scholars could reasonably ask whether other figures could be placed in dialogue by a similar discovery. This has remained an object of fascination for students of John Locke’s political thought since the 1950s, when Peter Laslett recovered the master catalog of Locke’s library from the moldering hunting lodge of Locke’s descendants, the Lovelace family of Torridon in Ross-shire.2 The catalog listed a copy of the first edition of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), but the copy itself—traceable by a line of descent to the possession of the Lovelaces—had disappeared.3 It * For their help in the preparation of this article, I would like to thank Mark Goldie, Tom Hamilton, Patrick Kelly, Scott Mandelbrote, J.
    [Show full text]
  • Cata 214.Indd
    Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers 46, Great Russell Street Telephone: 020 7631 4220 (opp. British Museum) Fax: 020 7631 1882 Bloomsbury, Email: [email protected] London www.jarndyce.co.uk WC1B 3PA VAT.No.: GB 524 0890 57 CATALOGUE CCXIV SUMMER 2015 BOOKS & PAMPHLETS 1564 - 1820 PART I: A-I Catalogue: Robert Swan Production: Carol Murphy & Ed Nassau Lake All items are London-published and in at least good condition, unless otherwise stated. Prices are nett. Items on this catalogue marked with a dagger (†) incur VAT (20%) to customers within the EU. A charge for postage and insurance will be added to the invoice total. We accept payment by VISA or MASTERCARD. If payment is made by US cheque, please add $25.00 towards the costs of conversion. Email address for this catalogue is [email protected]. JARNDYCE CATALOGUES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, price £5.00 each include: Anthony Trollope, A Bicentenary Catalogue; The Romantics: A-Z; The Romantic Background; The Museum: a Jarndyce Miscellany; Books from the Library of Geoffrey & Kathleen Tillotson. JARNDYCE CATALOGUES IN PREPARATION include: Conduct & Education; Books & Pamphlets 1564-1820 Part II: J-Z; Bloods & Penny Dreadfuls; The Dickens Catalogue. PLEASE REMEMBER: If you have books to sell, please get in touch with Brian Lake at Jarndyce. Valuations for insurance or probate can be undertaken anywhere, by arrangement. A SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE is available for Jarndyce Catalogues for those who do not regularly purchase. Please send £20.00 (£30.00 / U.S.$55.00 overseas, airmail) for four issues, specifying the catalogues you would like to receive. BOOKS & PAMPHLETS - PART I: A-I 1564-1820.
    [Show full text]
  • Index to the Court Books of the Stationers' Company, 1679–1717
    INDEX TO THE COURT BOOKS OF THE STATIONERS’ COMPANY, 1679–1717 1 2 INDEX TO THE COURT BOOKS OF THE STATIONERS’ COMPANY, 1679–1717 Alison Shell and Alison Emblow General Editor: Robin Myers BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 2007 3 Copyright Alison Shell and Alison Emblow and The Bibliographical Society, 2007 Published by The Bibliographical Society and Oxford University Press isbn 978 0948170 15 7 A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, recorded or otherwise reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any electronic or mechanical means without the prior permission of the copyright holders Designed and typeset by David Chambers Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Cambridge University Press 4 CONTENTS Foreword by Robin Myers 7 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 11 History of the Project 40 Bibliographical Description of Court Books 41 Arrangement of Entries 45 Select Bibliography 49 Abbreviations 52 Illustrations 53 Index 55 5 6 FOREWORD Court Books E, F and G cover the years when the country was still haunted by the spectres of revolution and civil war and Charles II was attempting to subdue the City livery companies by replacing their charters and interfering in their elections. The end of Court Book F minutes the internal politics surrounding the expiry of the Printing Act in 1695, which spelt the end of the Company’s statutory powers over the book trade as it moved into a period of stability at the start of Court Book G. There are useful but varied indexes to Court Books B to D, 1576 to 1687, too disparate in method ever to be reduced to a single uniform sequence.
    [Show full text]