History of the Book: an Undisciplined Discipline?<Product>

Review: History of the Book: An Undisciplined Discipline? Author(s): Cyndia Susan Clegg Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 221-245 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1262225 . Accessed: 23/04/2011 09:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press and Renaissance Society of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Renaissance Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org ReviewEssay Historyof theBook: An UndisciplinedDiscipline?

by CYNDIA SUSAN CLEGG

DouglasA. Brooks.From Playhouse to PrintingHouse: Drama andAuthorship in EarlyModern England. (Cambridge Studies in RenaissanceLiterature and Culture,36.) Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000. xviii + 293 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 0-521-77117-X. FrancesE. Dolan. Whoresof Babylon:Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth- CenturyPrint Culture.Ithaca and London: Cornell UniversityPress, 1999. xii + 231 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 0-8014-3629-X. Cecile M. Jagodzinski.Privacy and Print: Readingand Writingin Seven- teenth-CenturyEngland. Charlottesville and London: University of VirginiaPress, 1999. 218 pp. $45. ISBN: 0-8139-1839-1. AdrianJohns. TheNature of the Book:Print and Knowledgein theMaking. Chicagoand London:The Universityof ChicagoPress, 1998. xxi + 753 pp. $40. ISBN: 0-226-40121-9. BrianRichardson. Printing, Writers and Readersin RenaissanceItaly. Cam- bridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999. xii + 220 pp. $59.95 (cl), $22.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-521-57161-8 (cl), 0-521-57693-8 (pbk). EveRachelle Sanders. Gender and Literacy on Stagein EarlyModern England. (CambridgeStudies in RenaissanceLiterature and Culture,28.) Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xvii + 260 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 0-521-58234-2. Kevin Sharpe.Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Readingin EarlyModern England.New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2000. xiv + 358 pp. $40. ISBN: 0-300-08152-9. J. ChristopherWarner. Henry VIII's Divorce: Literature and thePolitics of the PrintingPress. Woodbridge: The BoydellPress, 1998. ix + 163 pp. $75. ISBN: 0-85115-642-8.

lizabeth Eisenstein'sobservation in ThePrinting Press as an Agentof Change:Communications and CulturalTransformations in Early-Modern Europethat the western world would have to wait a "afull century after Gutenbergbefore the outlinesof a new world picturebegin to emergeinto view"(1: 33) necessarilylocates originary studies of the culturalimplications

RenaissanceQuarterly 54 (2001): 221-45 [221] 222 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY of printing and books in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies and accounts for the visible presenceof studies on "printculture" among recent publicationsin Renaissancestudies. It is perhapssome measureof the degree to which printinghas transformedculture that we had to wait a meretwenty yearsafter the publicationof Eisenstein'smonumental study for the "new" academicdiscipline awkwardly called the "historyof the book"to emerge. The past few yearshave seen an impressiveoutput of significant(and some not so significant)books in this area.These studiesI considerhere suggest the vitalityand viabilityas well as the inherentintractability of the historyof the book as a "discipline."One measureof the degreeof energywith which the study of the book has been pursuedis how readilyit has expandedfrom regardingonly printingto embracingEisenstein's broader category of "Com- municationsand CulturalTransformations," a disciplinary transformation thathas made "the history of the book"the bestpossible appellation for what in its variousavatars has been termedmore precisely"print culture studies," "thehistory of materialtexts," "literacy studies," "the history of reading,"and "publishinghistory" (to name but a few). The titles and secondarytitles of some of the books consideredhere (ThePolitics of Readingin EarlyModern England;Reading and Writingin Seventeenth-CenturyEngland; Gender and Literacyon Stagein EarlyModern England; Drama and Authorshipin Early ModernEngland; Print and Knowledgein theMaking; Literature and thePol- itics of the PrintingPress; and Catholicism,Gender and Seventeenth-Century PrintCulture) underscore the rangeof topicsthat maybe subsumedinto the study of the historyof the book - reading,print, authorship,and drama (becauseits legacysurvived only in print,as one of thesestudies argues). RobertDarnton's 1982 essay,"What is the History of Books?"(Daed- alus3: 65-83), which registeredthe emergenceof the historyof the book as a new discipline,is often regardedas a foundingdocument for the field of study.From Darnton'sperspective, the disciplineemerged when the interests of scholars from several disciplines (literary studies, sociology, bibliography,library science, and history)became focused on printing'sim- pact on social and culturalhistory. The creationin 1991 of SHARP (the Societyfor the Historyof Authorship,Reading and Publishing),the profes- sional association dedicated to the history of the book, registers the expansionof interestin the field from "printculture" to questionsof reading, authorship,and other formsof publication.SHARP's website offers a usefuldefinition of the historyof the book, which, it says, is not onlyabout books per se: broadly speaking, it concernsthe creation, dis- semination,and reception of scriptand print, including newspapers, periodicals, andephemera. Book historians study the social, cultural, and economic history HISTORYOF THE BOOK 223

of authorship;the historyof the book trade,copyright, censorship, and under- groundpublishing; the publishinghistories of particularliterary works, authors, editors,imprints, and literaryagents; the spreadof literacyand book distribu- tion; canon formationand the politics of literarycriticism; libraries, reading habits,and readerresponse. (http://www.indiana. edu/-sharp/) In 1998 SHARP launched its journal, Book History, which met with the Council of Editors of Learned Journals' acclaim. Book History's policy of considering for publication work on any literary culture or historical period, using any methodology and representing all disciplines reiterates the vision of SHARP and Darnton that studies in the history of the book are necessarily interdisciplinary. An interdisciplinary discipline, however, poses some problems. In 1996 John Sutherland - whose VictorianNovelists and Publishers(Athlone Press, 1978) represents a significant contribution to the scholarship of publishing history - remarkedthat the absence of publishing history departments and significant job opportunities suggested that the history of the book had not fulfilled its early promise as a lively new discipline (Times LiterarySupple- ment, 31 May 1996). Sutherland here established one set of criteria by which to judge an academic discipline - criteria, which in the world of tight academic funding, especially for programs in history and literature, seem quite relevant. While academic institutions have been establishing all kinds of centers for interdisciplinarystudies - including those for book history at Pennsylvania State University and the Universities of Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, Toronto, Vancouver, and Edinburgh, as well as a coopera- tive program between the British Library,Reading University, the University of London and other British institutions - their successes within institutions depend upon the willingness of traditional disciplines to financially support their faculty whose time is engaged in work a department may regard as being "outside." Thus, academic department status and job placement may indeed represent useful criteria for measuring viability. Institutional support may ultimately determine the status of studies in the history of the book within the academy, but institutionalization is not the only standard for assessing the vibrancy of a discipline. Another usual measure is the published scholarship in a field. Given this criterion, this "new"discipline has been alive and well for considerably longer than twenty years, especially if we allow for publication in the scholarly areas whose interests converge in the history of the book. Bibliographical societies have a distinguished history of publishing not only journals like The Library,Pub- licationof the BibliographicalSociety of America,and Studiesin Bibliography, but important studies in printing history like those in the 1950s and '60s on early London publishing by W.W. Greg or more recently Peter Blayneys The 224 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Bookshopsin Paul's CrossChurchyard (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990). Librarybulletins and journals like The Huntington LibraryQuarterly and the Bulletin of theJohn RylandsLibrary have a long established tradition of publishing scholarshipin the field. That CambridgeUniversity Press, The PennsylvaniaState UniversityPress, and the Universityof Massachu- setts Presshave recentlydedicated "series" within their pressesto studiesin printculture and the historyof the book is less an indicationthat a new discipline has emergedand these pressesare now publishingwork in the field than a changein marketingstrategies that recognizethe insufficiencyof traditional categories of period and discipline to describe recent trends in academicscholarship. Studies in the history of books, and printing, and reading,and even authorship- that is in the "disciplines"whose interests convergein the historyof the book - may not be new, but as the publica- tions consideredhere suggest,the history of the book may be acquiringa newlydeveloped methodology that may properlybe regardedas distinctive: its approachis interdisciplinary."Interdisciplinarity," as the manifestosof Darnton, SHARP,and BookHistory indicate, should be the historyof the book'sdistinguishing feature, but these studiesreveal that besidesbringing togetherscholars whose interestsconverge, the "discipline"is now drawing individualscholars whose work is itself interdisciplinary;that is, it depends on morethan one disciplinarymethodology (for example,history and liter- aryanalysis or bibliographyand history). Besidestheir interdisciplinarymethodology, these recentstudies in the historyof the book displayanother feature commonly associated with an academicdiscipline - a sharedliterature. The historyof the book hasacquired a set of texts to which currentwork in the field regularlyrefers and some of whichhave met with informedand provocativechallenges. Besides Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Pressas an Agent of Change, seminal works in the field include: Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, Readers,Authors and Li- braries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries; Philip Gaskell, A New Introductionto Bibliography;Suzanne Hull, Chaste,Silent and Obedient:English Booksfor Women1475-1640; Lucien LeFebvreand Henry- Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impactof Printing 1450-1800; es- saysby PeterBlayney, Robert Darnton, John Feather,and MichelFoucault's (respectively,"The Publicationof Playbooks,""History of reading,""From Rights to Copyright:The Recognitionof Authors'Rights in English Law and Practicein the Sixteenthand SeventeenthCenturies," and "Whatis an Author?");Harold Love, ScribalPublication in Seventeenth-CenturyEngland; Arthur Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English RenaissanceLyric; and Mark Rose, Authorsand Owners: The Invention of Copyright.As this list suggests,interest in the historyof the book is particularlyvital among scholars of HISTORYOF THE BOOK 225 earlymodern literature and culture.(I here add the caveatthat this should not be takento mean that all work or even the most importantwork in the history of the book is on earlymodern Europebut ratherthat scholarsin earlymodern European studies are finding the historyof the book a fruitful areaof investigation.)Immersed as it is in studiesof Renaissance/earlymodern culture,the historyof the book is addressingthe substantiveissues that havebeen elicitingthe interestof scholarsin establisheddisciplinary areas of earlymodern history and literature:the constitutionof authorityand of the self in relationshipto authority,the constructionof gender,and the estab- lishmentof a public(and private) sphere. Each of the studiesin the historyof the book I am consideringhere furthersthe conversationbegun by Eisen- stein, Chartier,Darnton, and Roseand representsa significantcontribution to our understandingof earlymodern culture. Taken as a whole, however, they illustratethat (to borrowfrom StanleyFish) "Being Interdisciplinary Is So VeryHard to Do" (Profession,1989, 15-22). Of these recent studies only Brian Richardson'sPrinting, Writersand Readersin RenaissanceItaly encompasses the breadthof historyof the book as suggestedby SHARP.Richardson, a professorof Italianliterature, has become conversantin the languageof the materialbook. Printing,Writers and Readersin RenaissanceItalys first section on the printing house is securely grounded in the generalliterature of bookmakingand printing practices from Moxon to Gaskelland more specificallyin the bibliographicallitera- ture on Italianprinting houses. While little here is new, Richardsonoffers a competent introduction to the Italian Renaissanceprinting house. Of greaterinterest is his demonstrationof the debt of printing practicesand productsto scribalculture. Richardsonalso relieson useful historicalevi- dence - wills, account books, legal contracts, together with the books themselves- to arguethat the printinghouse in RenaissanceItaly was fun- damentally a business operation whose success depended upon the marketplace.Differences among the variousItalian principalities necessarily existed,and these arewell noted. Richardson'sstudy of the relationshipbetween manuscript and printad- dressesone of Eisenstein'spremises - that the adventof print causedthe Renaissance.Implicit in Richardson'scomparison between scribal and print productionis the recognitionthat if, as PaulKristeller maintained, the Re- naissance in Italy was indeed first the recovery, reproduction and disseminationof classicaltexts and later the humanist responseto them, then the Renaissancehad begun long beforeprinting became established in the Italiancity-states. The ItalianRenaissance's interest in texts createdan environmentthat was receptiveto printing- indeedprinting advanced the 226 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Renaissancein this sense- but printingafter 1450 only extendedwhat had begun in a scribalculture in the firstpart of the Quattrocento. Richardsonalso examinesthe implicationsfor authorsof the commercial natureof Italianprinting. The high costs of materialsand laborassured the continuationof a patronagesystem that had begun in scribalculture. Authors,as manypreliminaries reveal, depended upon patronageto pay the costs they incurredin having their work printed.In the Quattrocentoau- thorsoften went heavilyinto debt if theyfailed to profitfrom their patron or if theirwriting did not find a commercialmarket (a difficultproposition be- causeof small print runs).While some Cinquecentoauthors became more sophisticated in their fragile relationshipswith printing houses, others merelysold their work to printersrather than take financialrisks. Despite these conditions, Richardsoneffectively argues that the presenceof print professionalizedauthorship. Although Richardsonrefers to Mark Rose's workon authorship,he does not reallyframe his discussionof authorsin relationship either to it or to other more theoretical considerations. The exampleshe cites - and they aresubstantial in both breadthand depth - arguethat printingconstituted both authorityand individualityin Italywell before the eighteenth century,in part becausegovernment privileges (li- censesto print)granted both to authorsand printersserved as effectivelyas "copyright"to constituteindividual agency. Outsideof acknowledgingthe importanceof readingaloud, Richardson's treatmentof readingis farmore interestedin what people readthan in how they read. GrantedRichardson subscribes to D. F. McKenzie'sand Roger Chartier'swork on the importanceof the materialbook, especiallyin regard to font and formatin his argumentthat as the preferredformat shifted from folio to quarto,reading shifted from the libraryto privatespace. Most of Ri- chardson'sinterest in reading,however, is directedto the marketplaceof print - both fromthe perspectiveof how printerscreated demand and how readers'tastes dictated publication. Relying on the evidenceof libraryholdings, book ownership,and circulation records,as well as account books from booksellersand printinghouses, this study offersa thoroughsurvey of the kinds of literatureproduced - devotionalliterature, self-help and courtesy books,romance, current affairs. It alsostudies the roleof women readers.Ri- chardsonacknowledges the effort of male writers and printersto direct women readersto the kind of courtesybook and devotionalliterature Su- zanne Hull has described in Chaste, Silent and Obedient, but he also demonstratesthe degreeto which book prefacesand dedicationsreflected "contemporaryconfidence in women'sability to enterthe worldof vernacular learningand literature"(148). At the sametime that printerswere responsive to the interestsof their readers,they were also proactivein using title pages HISTORYOF THE BOOK 227

and dedications to create a market for their products. His consideration of marketing strategies contributes insights into the reliability of print. The claims of printers in their preliminariesand title pages to new and improved editions, Richardson suggests, were overly inflated in order to create reader demand for more products. Printed texts were nowhere near as suspect as has been suggested, and the printers' allegations of former errors, Richardson says, were made "not always, one suspects with hand on heart" (153). Printing, Writersand Readersin RenaissanceItaly condudes with an important assessment of printing's influence on Renaissance Italy that points to the commonsense way in which Richardson has addressed an important subject in the history of the book. The achievementof all those involvedin print production- the makers,fi- nancersand sellersof booksas well as thosewho wrote or edited the texts to be printed- was to providea betteropportunity for more people, from a wider spectrumof society,to enjoythe benefitsof reading,by derivingfrom the written word theirown personalusefulness and pleasure.(157) Throughout this study, Richardson demonstrates a sound assessment of the material book as evidence, a solid historiographic approach, and a command of the literatureof Italian bibliographical studies. His greaterinterest in reading tastes than practices means that this study contributes less than it might have to our understanding of the relationship between books and emerging notions of authority and autonomy. Even so, this is a book that in respond- ing to McKenzie's and Chartier's challenge to scholars to demonstrate the interconnection between bibliography,history, and literature,provides a useful compendium of knowledge about printers, books, writers, and readers. Even with all its strengths, Printing, Writersand Readersin Renaissance Italy leaves the readerwith the sense that there is much more specificallythat might be learned about the subject - or rather about the myriad individual cases that this comprehensive survey considers. The other books that have recently appeared in the history of the book - which indeed fall into the subdivisions set out in Richardson'stitle - are far more specialized, despite the extravagant claims made by some of their titles. (Clearly marketing has not changed much since the Italian Renaissance.) Probably the most ambi- tious of these studies is Adrian Johns's The Nature of the Book, which though it pretends to address printing, writing, and reading in early modern En- gland, really tells us much more about the relationship between printing and scientific authorship. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making finds a nice balance in Douglas Brooks'sFrom Playhouseto Printing House: Drama andAuthorship in EarlyModern England, which considers the relationship between the printing house and dramatic authorship. 228 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

TheNature of the Bookargues that a genuineprint culture- a culture in which the printedtext has credit,authority, and fixity- only emergedin England when the growing pursuit of "naturalknowledge" (science) required"civility of communication."Johns challenges Elizabeth Eisenstein in contending that ratherthan inhering in print, fixity and standardization were culturallyconstructed. Johns investigatesthe culturalspaces - local, particular,and historicallycontingent - that participatein this construc- tion. He finds here a "confrontation between genteel authorship and commercialappropriation" peopled with heroesand villains. The villainsare "pirates"(a termJohns admittedly adopts for its "dramaticvalue" for anyone who violatesany form of "propriety"interest in a text), the heroesthe "gen- tlemen"who producedand printed"natural knowledge." To begin,Johns invokes Stuart historiographer James Howell's likening of London to a book and adoptsthis as the "epigraph"for his own discus- sion: "byexploring the precinctsof the city, one may learnmuch about the natureof the book"(62). ReadingThe Nature of the Bookis like wandering the streetsof Londonwithout an A toZ. Fromfamiliar straight, broad roads, narrowstreets veer off into peculiarprecincts so distinctivethey ceaseto feel like London. Buildingshere lack addressesand streetssigns (Johnsomits dates from his footnotes), and one can get lost in a mews - an extraordi- nary mews perhaps- but lost no less. The first three chapterstravel the broadroad through the booktrade'scenters in Saint Paul'sCross and Little Britain.They enter the printer'spatriarchal "domestic" household through the doorsof JosephMoxon. Johns "breaches the walls"of Stationers'Hall to investigatetensions between the Stationers'self-regulatory practices and those of the Crown.This is territoryalready traveled by PeterBlayney, Cyp- rian Blagden, FrederickSiebert, Philip Gaskell, and W.W. Greg - even thoughJohns presumesto say his "is the first realattempt to portrayprint culturein the making"(3). Johns'spreference for Enlightenmentgentility and civilitystrongly color his account.London printing inhabits the "Statio- ners' commonwealth in which the credit of printed materials was profoundlycompromised" (262) and where the productionof knowledge was "rivenby privatedeals, intrigue and distrust"(183). Havingexplored print's local habitation,The Nature of theBook follows the pathsof a few extraordinaryindividuals who soughtto securefor natural philosopherssome refuge,however transitory, from print's endemic culture of usurpation.The RoyalSociety is centralhere, but Johnsalso turnsinto such blindalleys as the relationshipnatural philosophers saw between religious en- thusiasmand bad reading practices - a detourthat adds little to longstanding theoriesof learningand relatesas well to scribalas to printculture. Indeed, the entiretreatment of readinghas little to do with print'sdistinctive character. HISTORYOF THE BOOK 229

This is not to say that TheNature of theBook is uninformative- its an- gel is in the details. Account after account assembles a vast array of contemporarysources: letters, reminiscences,court records,and printed books and pamphlets.The recordedevents are exceptional: the earliestcon- structionsof a historiographyof printingby MichaelSparke, Richard Atkin, and John Streater;Thomas Willis's search for the soul'sanatomy in the dis- sected brains and nervous systems of "Hecatombs"of cadavers;Henry Oldenburg'ssingular effort to establish"experimental research, replication, openness, transnationalcooperation, and peer review"(532) in the Royal Society'sPhilosophical Transactions; the first royal"astronomical observer" John Flamsteed'sencounters with scientificand personalrivalries which af- fectedHistoria Coelestis Britannicds publication. The devil hereis in the generalizations.Johns's efforts to imposesignifi- cance on the highly individual tales he tells lead to serious errors- the greatestof which is that TheNature of theBook is aboutprint culture's emergence in earlymodern England. It is not. TheNature of theBook's London is bornof the Revolutionand risesfrom the GreatFire's ashes. Virtually no con- siderationis given to the first hundredand fifty yearsof printing.Closely alignedwith this is the book'sclear bias that scienceis the only realknowl- edge;no otherlearning required reliable texts. Bibles, by Johns's account, were especiallyunreliable. (Here Johns overplaysthe few notoriousinstances of biblicalmisprinting.) Drawing uncritically on remarksby iconoclasticprint- ers and disgruntledauthors, the case for piracy is expanded to an entire industryfrom the few highlyprofitable texts that were indeedprey to rogue printers.Johns also appearscuriously uninformed about some aspectsof En- glish printinghistory. For example, Johns credits Streater with transforming the common law by printinglaw books - "thenewly printed'Reports' of judges'learned in the law"'(321). Suchreports were hardly "newly printed." Lawbooks, includingreports and statutes,constituted a substantialpart of English printed books during Henry VIII's reign, and the patent for law bookswas one of the earliestand most lucrative.The transformationin En- glish common law beganover a hundredyears before Streater! Johns's failure to consider print culture prior to "naturalphilosophy's" growth seriously skews this work, distortingits culturalknowledge. TheNature of the Book shouldbe readnot forwhat it pretendsto be - the makingof printculture in earlymodern England - but forwhat it is - an explorationof the relationship betweenprinting and sciencein the centuryfollowing the Restoration. I can only wish Johnshad readthe diatribesof dissatisfiedprinters and authorswith the kind of skepticismthat Richardsondisplays in readingtitle pagesand preliminaries.Johns also shouldhave known moreof the scholarship on Englishprinting and textualstudies that groundsDouglas Brooks's 230 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY work. In FromPlayhouse to PrintingHouse: Drama and Authorshipin Early Modern England Brooks engages theoretical explorations of authorship in a study of the material world of the London printing house and one of its products - printed plays. To understand authorship as a concept, Brooks draws upon the resistance of both Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault to regarding authorship as the unifying relationship between a creative genius and a body of works. Brooks also identifies with the New Textualism, a recent reaction against the New Bibliography,which dominated textual theory in the twentieth century. The New Bibliography posited that somewhere between pristine authorial intent and the text in the reader'shand, a nefarious world of publication intervened - this world prompted by greed proceeded by stealth to provide an unreliable "unauthorized"product to indiscriminate and nondiscriminating readers, especially for English printed drama in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Brooks effectively counters this narra- tive by deftly finessing the networks of engagement that he regardsas both enabling and inhibiting the materialization of plays as they passed from the stage to the page. Brooks argues that the printing of plays, which coincided with the professionalization of the London stage, commodified dramatic authorship, and this commodification in turn intensified the "preoccupation with individualized authorial agency" (xiv). Brooks begins his study with the earliest conjunction of printing and drama, the publication of Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville's Tragedy of Gorboduc. First published in 1565 by William Griffiths, the play's title page establishes all the conventions of attribution that would later come to dominate dramatic publication: authors, actors, performance, printer, and bookseller. Five years later when John Daye reprinted the play under the new title "The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex" in a collection of Thomas Norton's "treatises"(sans the conventional attributions, thus erasing collab- oration), the printer's introduction denounced Griffiths' edition, arguing instead for the integrity and authority of his own copy. Here in a publisher's ploy to sell his text, Brooks observes, "Daye essentially rehearses all of the main issues that would eventually constitute the foundation of twentieth- century bibliographic, editorial, and scholarly approaches to dramatic texts produced in early modern England" (31). Furthermore, Daye's 1570 collection of Norton's "works"- "A range of attributed and anonymous writing with six works by a 'single' author"(42) - demonstrates that at the earliest stage of dramatic printing a published text claimed to enhance an author's reputation and command a renewed public interest by providing an author- itative text. In short, conceived as a commercial venture, the material book constituted Thomas Norton as an "author"whose "presence"and "authori- zation" of the included texts (despite his literal absence) enhanced their HISTORYOF THE BOOK 231 marketvalue. This earlyand seeminglyobscure instance of dramaticpubli- cationwarrants the attentionBrooks accords it both becauseit witnessesthe earliestcollaboration between printing house and playhousein sixteenth and seventeenthcentury England and becauseit representsthe patternthat other collections of dramaticworks - notably those by Jonson, Shakes- peare,and Beaumontand Fletcher- would follow in creating"a new and prestigiousidentity for printeddrama" (43), which in turn construedthe playwrightas "author." Despitethis common denominator,the individualbooks Brooksexam- ines (the quarto editions of the two parts of Shakespeare'sHenry IV, the 1623 Shakespearefolio, Ben Jonson's1616 Workes,Humphrey Moseley's 1647 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher'splays) are not without what Brooksrefers to as their own "dramasof authorship"that aredistinct from "theplays they were designedto preserveand promote"(xiii). To confront Shakespeare'scommanding presence in mattersof dramaticauthorship, Brookscuriously (and cleverly) relies upon the fateof SirJohn Oldcastle; the "initialdeletion of Oldcastle[as the namefor Falstaff]from an earlytext of 1 HenryIV and its subsequentrestoration to the Oxford edition constitute two importanttextual points in the historyof Shakespeareauthorship"(67). In a subtlesleight of hand, Brooksestablishes the riseof Shakespearean authorshipfrom the ashesof Oldcastle,who, in less than a hundredyears of print, went from heretic to Protestantmartyr to a ribaldfat knight in the HenryIV plays,the transformationof whose nameto Falstaffis registeredin the first printed play attributingauthorship to Shakespeare.Here Brooks sees "thetwo HenryIVplays as comprisingan importanttransitional space in which Shakespeare'sauthorship replaces Oldcastle's martyrdom, in which the [dramatic]author-function comes to lodge itself where previouslythe martyr-functionserved to individualizeand embody England'snational consciousness"(95). Still focusingon Oldcastle/Falstaff,Brooks then considers the subsequent trajectory of Shakespeareanauthorship in the importanteditions of Shakespeare's"works" from Heming and Condell's 1623 folio to NicholasRowe's first critical edition in the eighteenthcentury to GaryTaylor and StanleyWell's 1986 edition for OxfordUniversity Press. The author function for "Shakespeare"achieved national prominencein 1709 when Rowe attributedthe generationof TheMerry Wives of Windsor to Queen Elizabeth'sdesire to see Falstaffin a comedy.In doing so, according to Brooks,Rowe "sidestepped"whatever legal, political, or institutional resistancehe might have encounteredto his criticaledition "byplacing the still tremulousfigure of the authorin a directencounter with a representative of institutionalizedindividuality, the monarch"(80)at the historical moment when authorshipwas "poised... to replacekingship as the para- 232 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY digm for the individualizedembodiment of the national consciousness." (96-97). It is also no coincidence,Brooks concludes, that at a time when efforts are being made to dismantleShakespeare's literary authority, Taylor and Wellsrestored "Oldcastle." Just as the 1623 folio materially"gave birth to the author'sindividuation" through its declarationof the deathof Shakes- pearethe man, Bettertonand Rowe'sedition "proclaimed,The Kingis dead! Long live Shakespeare!"and GaryTaylor and StanleyWells's edition "defi- antly argues,The Authoris dead. Long live Shakespeare"(102). The name "Shakespeare,"Brooks thus demonstrates,resistently reappears to sell the booksassociated with his authorship. Althoughthe other dramasof authorshipBrooks recounts may be less spectacular,they areno less effectivein establishingthe degreeto which the printing house conferredauthorial status on playwrights.Brooks revisits Ben Jonson's1616 collected Workes,demonstrating that Jonson only "mar- shaledthe printingpress to asserthis individuality"for his playswritten for the public stage (a venue in Jonson'stime of predominantlycollaborative authorship),but was less concernedabout poems and masqueswritten for the court- "whereindividuation is chieflyvested in the figureof the monarch" (121). The successful constituting of Ben Jonson as an author contrastswith the inability of the printing press to successfullyfigure as "author"two more typical theatricalconditions - the professionalplay- wright and theatricalcollaboration. John Heywood, whose careerlasted nearlyfifty years,individually or collaborativelywrote more than two hun- dredplays, most of which havebeen lost becauseHeywood said of himself, "it neuerwas any greatambition in me, to bee in this kind Voluminously read"(quoted, 193). If Heywood's drama is one of failed "authorship," HumphreyMoseley's effort to honor dramaticcollaboration in his edition of FrancisBeaumont and John Fletcher'splays not only came too late - five yearsafter the theaterswere closed- but was, accordingto Brooks,a dramaof inauthenticauthorship. Brooks takes this edition as illustrativeof the complexissues surrounding authorship - "thedesire ... to reducethe multiple and dispersedintentions that shapedplay texts in the playhouse and the printinghouse into idealized,single-author works" (153). The entire thrustof contemporarynotions of authorshipas the individualauthor's right in "inalienableintellectual property" Brooks thus demonstrateshere, as in all of his study, to be inconsistentwith the conditions of writing for the stagein RenaissanceEngland. Brooksand Johnscontribute to our understandingboth of authorship -the scientificauthor and the dramaticauthor at least- and of the roleof the printinghouse ratherthan copyrightin creatingthe "author."Johns is more concerned with textual authority than Brooks, but this is because HISTORYOF THE BOOK 233

Brooks'swork is well-groundedin theoreticalskepticism about the transpar- ency of text. On the other hand, the bravurawith which Brooksengages textual and cultural reading- especiallywith regardto the waxing and waning of culturalauthority in his Oldcastle-monarch-Shakespearepara- digm - may well put off readerswith a more pragmaticinterest in the historyof the book. It is, I find, easierto indulge Brooks's"lit crit"display thanJohns's ignorance (or ignoring)of the first 150 yearsof printingin En- gland. Anyone who readsJohns to understandthe nature of the book in earlymodern England must also readBrooks. Together they give a more ac- curatepicture. Like Richardson (and unlikeJohns) Brooks understands that the skullduggeryprinters attributed to theirpeers - and thatauthors attributed to printers- was a usefulmarketing tool; Johns, however, reminds us that something beyond the marketplace- the new scientific learning- createdanother kind of "marketplace"for print in the eighteenthcentury. If Brooksand Johns contribute to our knowledgeof the relationshipof authorsto the printinghouse, KevinSharpe's Reading Revolutions: The Pol- itics of Readingin EarlyModern England offers a formidablestudy of the relationshipbetween reading and politicalculture based on a detailedanal- ysis of the manuscriptnotebooks and diariesof a single Englishgentleman, SirWilliam Drake.Sharpe acknowledges that a casestudy approach such as his may be regardedas anomalous and to correct this places his subject within theoreticalconsiderations of readingpractices. In doing so, Sharpe addresseshis studydirectly to the disciplinaryconcerns of the historyof the book and to its interestin promotinginterdisciplinarity - even while his principalinterests and methods remainfundamentally historiographic. In their focus upon women's reading in early modern England, Cecile Jagodzinski'sPrivacy and Print:Reading and Writingin Seventeenth-Century Englandand EveSanders's Gender and Literacyon Stagein EarlyModern En- gland complementSharpe's study both in subjectand approach,balancing his interestin the political(and male) public sphere with an investigationof the relationshipbetween readingpractice and the tensionswomen experi- enced between cultural constructions of the public and the private. Looking more closely at how these three scholars- a male historianand two women literarycritics - negotiatethe differencesin their approaches to documents and texts suggestsfurther both the fruitfulnessand peril of marryingdisciplinary methodologies. In his substantialintroductory chapter to ReadingRevolutions, Sharpe squarelyfaces the complexissues surrounding being interdisciplinary- and failingto do so. Sharpelocates the "unsatisfyingimpasse" in the recentde- bate among historiansabout seventeenth-centuryEnglish political culture in his colleagues'reluctance to "accommodatethe fluidityof meaningspos- 234 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY sible and/or 'intended' in the documents on which historians rely"(9). While Sharpecertainly esteems (and practices)the historian'sattention to documentaryevidence and the "closesituating and historicizingof textsand events,"he maintainsthat "interdisciplinaryand criticalapproaches are essential to understandinga Renaissanceculture in which epistemology, interpretation,the exegesisof meaninghad not fragmentedinto discretedis- ciplinary practices"(9-10). Sharpe believes that postmodern semiotic, philosophical,and literarytheory may enable scholars and historiansof early modernEngland to "reimaginea Renaissanceculture that did not sharethe positivismor 'theorganicist ideology of modernism"'(16). Sharpe'senthusiasm for criticaltheory centers in its "concernwith the readingand consumptionof texts"(34), in particular,he regardsa historyof readingas "centralto understandingthe 'masternarratives' of society and politics"(39). It is herethat Sharpeturns his attentionto the emergenceof the historyof the book as a discipline.He applaudsthe discipline'srecogni- tion that "certaintypes of historicalenquiry, the waysin which questionsare askedas well as answeredneed to be an interdisciplinaryendeavor" at the same time that he lamentsthe difficultyof being interdisciplinary:"Tradi- tional biographers and librarians do not always feel at home with sociologistsand Annaliste historians, let alonecritical theorists" (39). Sharpe impliesthat this condition is responsiblefor the failureof the discipline"to incorporatereception theory into a historicaland materialstudy of books and their readers"(39) - a condition that at this point we rightlysuspect Sharpe'sReading Revolutions will seek to remedy.Before he turnsto the real subjectof this study - the analysisof a "cacheof papers,notes of reading and annotatedprinted books, with politicalobservations and comments,by a memberof the provincialgentry" - Sharpebriefly surveys the literature on readingpractices and interpretativecommunities and reviewshow the materialattributes of books (formats,preliminaries, illustrations, typogra- phy,and, interestingly,genres) condition reading. In doing so he clearlysets out the agendafor his own work.It will respondto his "appealfor a morein- terdisciplinarypraxis," his call for "anaddress to text"and "engagementwith some of the questionsraised by criticaltheory," and his insistence"that a history of politicsmust incorporatethe historyof reading"(61). The cacheof WilliamDrake's writings that Sharpeconsiders consists of "somesixty volumes in all, spanningover thirtyyears of turbulenthistory fromthe late 1630s to the early1660s," including commonplace books with detailedreading notes, a journaland parliamentarydiary, and some printed books with marginalia,which, Sharpemaintains, "not only offer the best materialwe have to date for how an earlyStuart gentleman read, but also providea strikingand surprisingcase study of the relationshipof individual HISTORYOF THE BOOK 235 readingand hermeneuticsto politicalperceptions and ideas"(78). William Drake,a "substantialand wealthy"country land ownerwho receivedhis education at Oxford and the Inns of Court, was not exactly politically disinterested.Quite the contrary,he aspiredto politicaloffice (whichhe obtained) and sat in Parliamentfor Amersham,though he absentedhimself from Englandduring the politicallyperilous years 1643-1660. It is, thus, not surprisingthat a relationshipshould exist betweenDrake's reading and his politics.What Sharpe'sstudy surprisingly reveals is the degreeto which a man of Drake'sposition and interests(his estatesand his personaladvance- ment) conscientiouslypursued a programof readingfocused on a pragmatic agendaof self advancement.Drake, Sharpedemonstrates, read to understand the world in which he lived, and he understood so that he might activelyparticipate. In this respect,Drake epitomized the end of the humanist education in which his readingwas firmly grounded.Drake's readings and readingpractices, however, persistently integrated humanist texts with contemporarypolitical treatises, English literature, English and Continental history,the Bible, sermons,letters, legal studies, and emblem books, dem- onstratingDrake's immersion in his immediateworld. Sharpe'sapproach to Drake'sreading is both analyticaland chronologi- cal. The first part of the book focuses on the reading notebooks (commonplacebooks) Drakeproduced between 1627 and the mid-1640s, the second upon his diary(principally from the 1630s), and the thirdupon anothergroup of notebooksfrom the 1640s and 1650s. The last section of Sharpe'sstudy considersa few printedbooks certainlyannotated in Drake's hand and locatesDrake's reading practices in the contextsof both political historyand readingtheory. For each group of Drake'smanuscripts, Sharpe establishesthe breadthof Drake'sreading and describesthe ways in which Drakeorganized his readingnotes (thematically,with cross-referencingbe- tweentexts). Even though Drake did not alwaysoffer in his own writingthe connectionof his readingto the eventsof his own time, Sharpe'scommand of seventeenth-centuryhistory enables him to contextualizeDrake's reading practices.He alsodiscovers the interrelationshipsbetween the readingnotes, diary,and parliamentaryjournal. For a scholarless scrupulousthan Sharpe, one might suspectthe historicalimagination of imposingthe politicalperspectives discoveredin Drake'snotes. This is not the case; Sharpe'sown meticulousannotation and cross-referencingsupports his analysisof the relationshipbetween Drake's reading and politicalperspectives. Furthermore, Sharpe'sown chronologicalapproach to Drakeallows him to demonstrate not only that Drake'sreading influenced his politics but that in the face of the crisis of the 1640s, Drake'sreading (and politics) changed. Drake re- turnedto textshe had readbefore but readthem differently.Sharpe uses the 236 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

later notebooks to show precisely how Drake's reading changed, and it is only after a sustained empirical analysis that Sharpe concludes: Drakehad been a criticof the governmentin churchand statebefore the Civil War.He blamedthe bishopsand clergyfor many of the ills that befell them, and perhapsthe king for imprudentcourses ... With the Civil Warhe feared the greatestof all ills - anarchyand democracy.Returning to his favouritehis- tories- and to Machiavelliand Guicciardini- duringthe 1640s and 1650s, Drakecondemned the republicand stressedthe need for one sovereignto sup- presssects and factionsand to unite the realmin peaceand concord.(252) Sharpe thus effectively argues that reading - for one man at least - was a political act. The problem Sharpe faces in his consideration of Drake's reading is whether or not such a microcosmic case history really does inform our knowledge of wider issues. It is here that contemporary theory proves useful to Sharpe, and for this he turns first to the notion of interpretativecommunities and then to theoretical interest in the relationship between reading practices and the constitution of the self. Sharpe places Drake's reading in the context of studies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reading circles like those surrounding Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Robert Cotton, and of in- dividuals like Shakespeare,Jonson, Clarendon, Milton, Lady Anne Clifford. In doing so, like those of these other seventeenth-century readers,his study argues that reading and books fostered resistance, self-realization, and the emergence of the self in early modern England. They all readfor action in the public realm;they all readpolitically. The fact that theirvalues, political attitudes and allegiancesdiffered and alteredgraphi- cally underpinswhat post-revisionisthistorians have begun to appreciate:that the cultureof earlymodern England, for all its rhetoricof common codes,was multivalent.Despite a common education,the homilieson obedienceand the prescriptionsof authority,people were able to constructmeanings for themselves,and constitutethemselves as politicalagents. (307) Sharpe thus places his study of one man's reading firmly within the main- stream of the concerns of early modern studies - in questions of the relationship between the book and the formation of individual agency. Along the way, he also makes an important contribution to understanding the history of the seventeenth century. If Drake is as representative of pre- vailing political attitudes as he is of the relationship between reading and political agency, then this study suggests that the English Revolution may be blamed more on clerical abuses and religious extremism than on the theo- logical difference between Arminianism and Calvinism, that Machiavelli's political thought was far more influential and pervasive in the early seven- HISTORYOF THE BOOK 237 teenthcentury than has been believed,and that ThomasHobbes was hardly singularin cravingeffective political authority. While ReadingRevolutions offers important insights into readingpractice and the relationshipbetween reading and politics,it is curiouslysilent on the role materialbooks playedin constitutingmeaning for Drake. I probably would not objectto this omissionexcept that by devotingseventeen pages of his introductionto the materialityof texts- format,bindings, fonts, preliminaries, and genres- Sharpecreates the expectationthat this study will contributeto this aspectof the historyof the book. Such unfulfilledpromise leadsme to wonderif addressingdisciplinary questions of historyof the book is not somewhatgratuitous. If so, mayit not then be possiblethat Sharpehas not fullycarried out otherexpectations his introductioncreates? Sharpe'scommitment to beinginterdisciplinary is laudable- but its ac- complishmentsometimes provesdifficult. Sharpeis conversantin critical theoryand makessome use of what he knows.I cannothelp but wish, however,that his knowledgehad extendedto some feminist theory,especially that which has recognizedthat the absenceof documentaryevidence on women'srole in history can be attributedas much to archivalpractices as women's agency. Sharpe might then not have been so ready to dismiss women, as he does here,because they failedto marktheir books: "Educated women readbut in a patriarchalculture that valuedfemale silence as well as obedience,women's responses to bookswere seldom articulatedor recorded publicly"(297). This slight acquiresa ratherodious resonancein its foot- note: "The absenceof marksof readingmay usefullybe consideredin the light of contemporarywomen students' disproportionately low percentageof firstclass degrees - which is often explainedin termsof women'sreticence aboutadversarial engagement with examinationquestions" (297 n. 252). Furthermore,even though Sharpeis conversantwith postmodernthe- oriesof intertextualityand text, he consistentlyreads Drake's notebooks as a historianreads documents, with a certainconfidence in the transparentre- lationshipbetween the signifierand the signified.This may be seen in the conclusionSharpe draws from one particularlyallusive passage on royalauthority in Drake'sreading notes. Sharpequotes the following passageat length (somethinghe does not often do), and readsit as indicativeof Drake's view that ceremonyand mysterywere essential to sustainauthority: ... in a stageplay all men know that he thatplays the greatest man's part may be the meanest,yet if a manshould . . . callhim by his own namewhile he standsin his majesty,one thatacts his partwith him may chance to breakhis head[for] marring the play. And so theysaid that these matters be king's games, asit werestage plays upon scaffolds, in whichpoor men are but the lookers on andthey that be wisemeddle no further.(222) 238 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

This passage'sallusive language that links the "king'sgames" to the theater's artifice, trivializingboth majestyand ceremony,registers a much deeper skepticismabout royalauthority than Sharpeadmits. This is particularly unfortunatesince the relationshipbetween authority and the alternativeno- tions of subject positions occupies such an important part of Sharpe's introductoryconsideration of contemporarytheory. Sharpe's gloss on Drake herealso raisesthe questionof preciselyhow Sharpereaches the conclusions he does fromthe textshe has read.Unfortunately - and perhapsnecessarily given the sheervolume of text he reads- Sharpe'swriting leaves little trace of the relationshipbetween his own readingand Drake'slanguage. CecileJagodzinski's Privacy and Printoffers an interestingcounterpoint to Sharpe'sinterest in the relationshipbetween an individual'sreading and his publicpolitics in her contentionthat privacy,individuality, and personal autonomyemerged in the seventeenthcentury because printed books "part- neredauthor and readerin a privateexperience with the text"(10). Because "Readersand authorsmeet anonymouslyand in private,"Jagodzinski argues that a privatesphere paradoxically emerged as a consequenceof the prolifer- ation of texts made availableby the new technologyof print. In grounding her study in theoreticalconsiderations of readingpractice and in her selec- tive reading of printed texts ratherthan in "documentary"evidence of readingpractice, Jagodzinski's study is antitheticalto Sharpe's.The chapters on devotionalliterature (Catholic and Protestant)and conversionnarratives (The ExceedingRich Gracesof SarahWight and Bunyan'sGrace Abounding) depict the intimaterelationship forged between the authorsand readersof printedtexts more persuasivelythan the chapteron the publishedletters of John Donne and CharlesI. Treatingthese printed letters as exemplaryis problematicboth becausethey are atypicaland becausetheir unintended publicationrefutes the book'scentral premise that privacyderives from the complicityof authorand reader.To argue,as Jagodzinskidoes, that in the seventeenthcentury "letters became a publishingphenomenon" that trans- formedletters into "ameans of personalcommunication" and "asymbol of accessto the self, the innerperson" (76-77) exposesthe faultline in Privacy and Print.The lettersof Donne and CharlesI mayevoke a worldof personal integrityand privacy,but this is a worldthat existedat compositionand not publication.The argumentthat printingfostered personal letter writing ig- nores the predominanceof scribalculture in early modern England and suggeststhat readingdiffered for printedand scribaltexts. Since this study focusesmore on readinggenerally than on the printedbookper se, how reading a printedtext necessarilyfosters a senseof self and privacythat readinga scribaltext does not remainsunclear. HISTORYOF THE BOOK 239

Privacyand Print'slast two chapterson MargaretCavendish and Aphra Behn,which considerthe "problemof publishingwomen in the seventeenth century,"bear a perplexingrelationship to the restof the book. At precisely the momentwhere by Jagonzinski'saccount print creates and validates a private sphereoccupied by the autonomousindividual, the femalecharacters createdby Behn and Cavendishdon the mantleof their autonomousindi- vidualityby speakingout and writing- by performingactions gendered male. Takenon their own, these chaptersare commendable,but arguinga gendered boundary between public and private spheres contradicts the book'scentral thesis. Do Bunyan,Charles I, and Donne, whose writingsJa- godzinskipersuades us revealthe privateself, thus occupy femininespace? Jagodzinskihas writtenherself into a cornerless becauseshe is wrong about what the literatureshe studiesreveals about reading and writing and privacy, or about Behn and Cavendish,than becausetheoretical constructs of writing, reading,gender, and privacyimpose constraints on her argument. In Genderand Literacyon Stagein EarlyModern England Eve Rachelle Sandersencounters a similartension between the culturalpractice of reading that is her concern and the literatureshe so deftly considers,but Sanders navigatesthe divide by openly adoptinga discourseof resistance,which is justified,she maintains,because the publictheater's literature in earlymodern Englandhad social frictionwritten into it "partlyas a matterof genre" (7). Sandersargues from the premisethat the humanisteducation taught to boys in earlymodern England gendered literacy male by encouragingread- ers (males)to emulatemodels of classical(male) virtu in both theirwriting and their lives. Women, if they learnedto read at all - or even less fre- quently to write - were schooled by conduct books to cultivate"mental attitudes"of virtue.Although Sanders offers a learnedsurvey of both theo- reticaland historicalstudies of literacyand humanistpedagogy, she slights materialevidence on women'sreading practices like book ownershipand au- thorshipand dependstoo singularlyon Vives'sThe Instruction of a Christen Woman(1523) and Braithwaite'sThe English Gentlewoman (1631) for con- ceptualizingwomen reading. Sandersapproaches Vives and Braithwaite with none of the skepticismRichardson displayed about similar male efforts in Italyto mould women. Such objectionspale againstthe book'sgenuine strength- the superbreadings Sanders offers of the waysin which playsby Mary Sidney,Thomas Middleton, Samuel Daniel, and Shakespearemake use of the book and the pen. Genderand Literacydoes not merelysurvey readingand writingon the Englishstage but ratherpresents a nuancedstudy of how culturalconstructions of writingand readinginform complexdra- matic characterizationand motivatedramatic structures that themselvesare as likelyto resistas to inculcatethe genderedhumanist model. Sandersoffers 240 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY genuinelyfresh insights into Shakespeare'splays, Love's Labours Lost, Richard II, Hamlet,and Antony and Cleopatra. LikePrivacy and Print,Gender and Literacy on Stagein EarlyModern En- gland closes on a curious note by shifting from theatricaldrama to what Sanderscalls "the drama of certainlives" - the actualpart women playedin scribalculture as representedby GraceMildmay's and Anne Clifford'sauto- biographicalwriting. Although this sectionexhibits a fine counterbalanceto the anxiousrepresentations she hasfound in the treatmentof literatewomen by male playwrights,Sanders's celebration of Cliffordand Mildmayhints that the genderingof readingmay havebeen otherwisethan what this book has argued.Both of these women by readingand writing stepped readily into the public sphere.Despite the anomaly,Sanders's treatment of these readingand writingwomen is far more satisfactorythan Sharpe'sconsider- ation of Anne Clifford - largely because Sandersdoes not restricther evidenceof readingpractice to the singularwitness of commonplacebooks. ReadingJagodzinski and Sanderstogether with Sharpe(or Sharpealongside Jagodzinskiand Sanders)exposes the fault lines in these interdisciplinary studiesof reading.Together they show that readingconstructed the self pri- vatelyas well as politically,and that our understandingof how readingand writinggendered the public and privatespheres depends not only upon the theoriesallowed and the evidenceadmitted but upon the kind of readings documentarytexts receive. Richardson,Brooks, Johns, Sharpe, Jagodzinski, and Sanders,despite all their evident differences,share a common concern for the structuralrela- tionshipbetween their subjects (material books, the printinghouse, science, readingand writingpractices) and culturalconstructions of authorship,authority,gender, and the public and privatespheres. J. ChristopherWarner's Henry VIII'sDivorce: Literature and the Politicsof the Printing Pressand FrancesDolan's Whoresof Babylon:Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth- CenturyPrint Culture, although still interestedin politics,authority, and (for Dolan) gender,more directlyaddress the relationshipbetween public opinion and the ideasthe printedword expresses than the structuralrelationship between printing and culture formation. In doing so, both Warrenand Dolan takefor grantedthe enormousimpact that the presenceof print had in shapingpublic opinion. Despitetheir focus upon the representationsthat appearedin print, these two studies implicitlyargue that in earlymodern England,at least,printing created a publicsphere, where different perspec- tivescould be presentedand wheredebate and discussionmight occur. ChristopherWarner's Henry VII's Divorce,well groundedin historical event, arguesthat Henry "hadpublished" a seriesof "fictions"(prose dia- logues that contained fictional scenes and characters) to discourage HISTORYOF THE BOOK 241 resistanceto his divorce.Assuming that all books printed"cum privilegio a regeindulto" - especiallyby the King'sPrinter, Thomas Berthelet- were at the King'sbehest, Warnerargues that Henry activelypromoted a very subtle propagandaprogram that cast him as a humanisticscholar-philoso- pher who allowed space for dissent. This image characterizedthe king as welcomingcounsel and criticismfrom those who were qualifiedto give it, court counselorsand others with "legitimateconnections to the govern- ment" (3). From this perspective,any text Bertheletpublished (however criticalof Henry'spositions) as well as any text printedby John or William Rastell(kinsmen and printersto lord chancellorThomas More) should be re-readas propagandadesigned to reduceopposition to the divorce.Warner reconsidersseveral examples of Tudor literature, including Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Sir Thomas Elyot's The BokeNamed the Governour,and ChristopherSaint German's The dialoges in Englishe,betweene a doctorof di- uinitie,and a studentin the lawesofEnglande, for their propagandavalue as either direct expressionsof the King'sself-fashioning or manifestationsof the kind of criticismthe King invited. Warner'sreadings of Tudorliterature are persuasiveas long as one ac- cepts his assumptionsabout the King'sPrinter and "cumprivilegio." This is somewhatproblematic since before 1557, when the London Companyof Stationersreceived its charter,royal printing privileges(which were rarely procureddirectly from the king) constituted a form of "copyright,"i.e. a printer'sexclusive right to print a given title. Furthermore,as the King's Printer,Thomas Bertheletwas expresslyallowed to imprint any book he publishedwith cumprivilegio. Thus, while any book that Henry VIII pro- moted would be likely to bearthe imprint, cumprivilegio, not every book bearingthis imprint necessarilyreflected the King'sagenda. Even so, in a comfortablemarriage between literary and historicalanalysis, Henry VIIIs Divorcereveals Warner's sophisticated knowledge of Henricianpolitical culture, his penchantfor subtle reading,and a commandingknowledge of the literatureprinted during the rein of HenryVIII. In TheWhores of Babylon,Frances Dolan surveysanti-Catholic polemic and propagandato find recurrentpatterns in which seventeenth-century Englishanxieties about the threatsposed by EnglishCatholics are bound up to deeplyrooted anxieties about female agency at everylevel of culture,from the bedroomto the councilchamber. Since these anxieties find expressionin the penalstatutes as well as in print, Dolan'sargument, for the most part,is essentiallynot a causalone on the role of printingper se, but ratheron the propagandisticuses that both Catholicsand Protestantsmade of the printed word. Dolan arguesthat anti-Catholicismwas deeplyrooted in Englishcul- turalanxieties which printingserved to codifyand disseminate.She refersto 242 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Eisensteinmore to demonstratethat Catholicsas well as Protestantsmobi- lized print - that they, like Protestants,entered into debate in which the printedpage becamea pubic spherethan to establisha relationshipbe- tweenprinting and changesin the religiousculture. Dolan's study focuses on threeimportant events in seventeenthcentury England when printedpropa- ganda against Catholics escalated- the Gunpowder Plot, the English Revolution,and the PopishPlot. Dolan employs the GunpowderPlot to establishthe codificationthat emergedin representingthe Catholicthreat. According to Dolan, "Manyof the otherwiseheterogeneous anti-Catholic texts written in responseto the plot employgender as one way of describinga terrifyinglynew threatin fa- miliaryet still disturbingterms" (47). Eventhough no women participated, the literatureidentifies Catholicism with "disorderlywomen" - those "dangerousfamiliars" who subvertfrom within and arepeculiarly resistant to the ruleof men, even theirhusbands and priests.To explainthis complexrepre- sentation,Dolan turnsto Englishlaw and the problemrecusant households posed to the principleof coverture,i.e. that husbandswere legally responsi- ble for theirwives. For English law to makerecusant women accountablefor their actions- to releasethem from coverture- threatenedthe essential structureof patriarchy.In the public imagination,according to Dolan, the "Hommecovert" (a man who engagedin outwardconformity and equivo- cation)replaced the "femmecovert" to such a degreethat playsin the public theater,like Macbethand Antonyand Cleopatra,represented the effeminacy of men divided in their loyalty between the public male ideal and private conscience.Far less subtlethan the theater,anti-Catholic propaganda registeredthe full rangeof culturalanxieties about unruly Catholic women from monstrousbirths, to "incontinentpriests debauching the souls as well as the bodiesof women"to wastrelhusbands: "Viewed with suspicionfrom without, the Catholic household was a space of gender inversion, gender integrationand genderleveling" (93). The anxietiesthat animatedthe "dangerousfamiliars" in polemic and propagandaassociated with the GunpowderPlot surfacedagain at the brink of the Revolution, but this time they became focused in one particular household - the King's.During the 1630s printed tractsthat associated Henrietta Maria with Catholic motherhood registeredanxieties about women'sdomestic influence rather than abouttheir unruliness. Dolan links fearsabout the "influencethat a Catholicwife or mother,particularly a royal one, might exerciseover a king and hence the country"(103) to Marian controversy.From Dolan's perspective, "The stature of Maryin Catholicbe- lief and practice"was taken by Protestantsas "proofof the excessivepower Catholicswere willing to invest in women," and this, in turn "servedas a HISTORYOF THE BOOK 243 starting point for attacks on actual Catholic women, such as Henrietta Maria"(106). Anxietyabout Catholic wives, Dolan argues,extended to concern about how Catholic women influencedtheir children.Although not widely registeredin print, Dolan cites this as the motivationfor legislation that sought to restrainCatholic education in Englandand preventEnglish childrenfrom being sent to the Continent. It is only in the last chapteron ElizabethCellier and the "PopishPlots" that Dolan finds printingdirectly facilitating and participatingin political events."Regarding the PopishPlot," says Dolan, "it is impossibleto distin- guish between events and their narrativerepresentations because those narratives- circulatedas rumors,offered in court as testimony,published - werethe event"(158). Furthermore,rumors and testimoniesthat constituted the Popish Plot depended upon their representation in print: "Withoutthe press,these trialswould have had limited audiencesand limited impact: the press did more to bring the Popish Plot into the public spherethan the courtsor the scaffolddid . .. Pressesprinted expanded ver- sions of witnesses'testimony, rival accounts of the trials and executions, gossipabout those suspectedor accused,satires, "news" (158-59). Dolan focuses on events and publicationsrelating to ElizabethCellier, a relatively minorfigure, who was accusedby her employee,Thomas Dangerfield, of in- venting a plot to incriminatethe Presbyteriansof a plot againstthe King. Cellier,indicted for treason,was acquittedbecause of her skillfulself defense at the trial. She then wrote an accountof the trialentitled Malice Defeated, for which she was subsequentlytried for and convicted of libel becauseit claimedthat the governmenttortured prisoners. The eventsand textsDolan describes(both Cellier's and thosethat attacked and satirized her) register the complex issueswomen (especiallypolitically interested Catholic women) facedin termsof legaland authorialagency: "Cellier was not uniquein having agency(and authorship) conferred on her only so that she might be held accountablefor her actions" (193). In Cellier'sparticular case, however, Dolan demonstratesthat ElizabethCellier's religious affiliation and gender "shapedher representationas a 'wretchedsubject"' - a Catholic woman who becamesubject to the full vocabularyof anti-Catholicdiscourse (210). As this accountof Dolan'sstudy may suggest, I concurwith ArthurMa- rotti'sassessment, quoted on the book jacket,that this is "culturalhistory at its best."Dolan providesa persuasive(although hardly disinterested) study of the ways seventeenth-centuryprinted texts representedCatholicism and genderand the relationshipsbetween them. Dolan skillfullyreads these texts againstthe importantwork of historiansof the seventeenth-century- in- cluding SusanAmussen, David Cressy,Eamon Duffy, ChristopherHaigh, PatrickCollinson, PeterLake, Michael C. Questier,Rachel Weil, and Tim 244 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Harris- and in doing so extendsher study'sunderstanding of the culture beyondwhat mightbe obtainedonly fromseventeenth-century texts. Dolan thus establishesthe degreeto which printedtexts are themselves cultural ar- tifactsthat areas relevantto producingthe cultural"history" of a societyas the documentaryevidence customarilyrelied upon by historians.In the sense that Whoresof Babylonis concernedwith both history and reading texts,Dolan's study is interdisciplinary- and it deservespraise for its command of the historical literature.On the other hand, Dolan's historical analysisis constrainedby the historicalstudies upon which it relies.In this respectshe fallsshort of the kind of interdisciplinarymethodological model Sharpeproposes that accommodatestheory, reading, and "empiricalre- search."This, however,is less a criticism of Dolan'sstudy than a further observationon the difficultyof engagingan interdisciplinarymethodology. It is in regardto Dolan'sinclusion of "printculture" in her subtitle that I wish to raisesome concernsI havewith Dolan'swork as representativeof the disciplineof the "historyof the book." Beginning in the 1930s, the New Criticismdismissed historicist ap- proachesto literatureon the groundsthat soundingthe depthsof a literary workfor its historicalallusions - for the way in which it mirroredthe culturein which it was produced- deflectedinterest away from the literature, provingultimately useless as a criticaltool. In the 1980s and 1990s, New Historicismrejuvenated literary historical studies - especiallyin the Re- naissance- not only by returningliterary texts to their historicalculture but also by readingthat culturetextually and positingthe intertextualityof variouskinds of culturaltexts. Dolan'sapproach, which readsanti-recusant laws and historicalaccounts of Catholic families (royalsand commoners alike)alongside Catholic and anti-Catholicpolemic and propaganda,places Whoresof Babylonin this tradition.Its status as a study of print cultureis somewhat more problematic.The manner in which she approachesthe printedtexts she considersin relationto the culture(especially in the first threeof the books fourchapters) seems to suggestless interest in the cultural implicationsof these texts having been printed than in what the printed texts "mirror"about culturalanxieties. In this regard,the printedword be- comes a kind of transparentrendering of anxietiesdeeply seeded within the culture.Saying this, especiallywhen the chapteron ElizabethCellier and the "PopishPlots" so directlyaddresses an instanceof "printculture," may seem unfair,except that Dolan'swork soundsan alarmto the dangerinto which studiesin printculture might fall in lesscompetent hands. It raisesthe ques- tion of whether the study of any nexus of cultural practice that finds expressionin print - anti-Catholicism,misogyny, political propaganda, Utopianism,neo-Nazisim, indeed, practicallyanything - is necessarilya HISTORYOF THE BOOK 245 study of print culture?Perhaps in fairness,one should see Dolan'sexcellent book, not as a study in "Catholicism,Gender and Seventeenth-Century PrintCulture" but as a groupof individualstudies of anti-Catholicismand gender,and one of the PopishPlot and printculture. While the relationshipbetween Whoresof Babylonand its subtitlemay suggestthe need for imposingsome kind of limit on "printculture" to assure that a center holds for this interdisciplinarydiscipline, Dolan'swork together with the other books considered here demonstratethe rewardof venturingoutside traditionalboundaries. The greatstrength of the books consideredhere is that together- in a full complement- they advance our understandingof authorship,textual authority, reading practices, and the political implications of printed texts in RenaissanceItaly and early modern England. Indeed, they fulfill the new discipline'spromise envi- sioned by Kevin Sharpe'sobservation that the historyof the book makesit clearthat "certaintypes of historicalenquiry . .. need to be an interdisciplinary endeavour"(39). Taken individually,however, each of these books revealsthat howevermuch the historyof the book needsto be "aninterdis- ciplinaryendeavour," to practiceinterdisciplinary scholarship requires more than becomingconversant in the recentliterature of anotherdiscipline; it requires a certain humility in the face of long traditions of bibliographic, historiographic,and criticalpractice, and a willingnessto acknowledgeand incorporatethese precedentsalong with often unaccustomedmethodolo- gies. These recentstudies in the historyof the book suggestthat although being interdisciplinaryhas become no easier"to do" than it was in 1988, when scholarsventure their efforts in a fieldsuch as this, thereis a fine yield. PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY

History of the Book: an Undisciplined Discipline?&lt;Product&gt;

History of the Book: an Undisciplined Discipline?<Product>