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A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis 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 Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details WITCHCRAFT AND THE BOOK TRADE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Simon Francis Davies PhD Early Modern Literature and Culture University of Sussex September 2012 ii I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in whole or in part to another university for the award of any other degree. Signature: iii University of Sussex Simon Davies DPhil Early Modern Literature and Culture Witchcraft and the Book Trade in Early Modern England Summary This thesis presents a study of the production and reception of English writing on witchcraft from the period 1560-1660 using the methodologies of the history of the book and the history of reading. The body of works under consideration includes scholarly treatises, news pamphlets, drama and ballads. The origins, literary contexts, production, dissemination and reception of these works are considered across the period. Analysis of reception involves consideration of contemporary library holdings, citations in print, binding and contemporary annotations; this section is based on study of the holdings of a number of research libraries in England and North America. The study supports the conclusions of recent research into scholarly writing on witchcraft, which has suggested that such writing was more thoroughly embedded in its intellectual context than has previously been appreciated; this study provides more evidence for this view and expands it to include the other genres of witchcraft writing under consideration. The study concludes that the concept ‘witchcraft writing’ is not a useful one for our understanding of this material. Conclusions are also offered about the relative impact of individual works, and about the impact of this body of writing as a whole. While general works stand out (the treatises of Reginald Scot, William Perkins and James I, as well as many Continental treatises), the overall impression is that writing on witchcraft was not successful commercially. This supports the conclusion that witchcraft writing was not as representative of early modern belief more generally as has been previously thought. iv Acknowledgements I am grateful to my supervisor, Matthew Dimmock, for advice and support along the way, especially given his somewhat unexpected step into the breach (twice). I am also grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, without whose support it would not have been possible to bring this project to completion. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Doctoral School at the University of Sussex for funding research trips to Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and Washington, D.C., without which my research would have been greatly impoverished. Many thanks must also go to the librarians and staff at the British Library; the Bodleian Library; Lambeth Palace Library; the Folger Shakespeare Library; the Library of Congress; the Library of Queen’s College, Oxford; the Codrington Library at All Souls College, Oxford; Senate House Library; the Wellcome Library; the John Rylands Library; Chetham’s Library; Cambridge University Library; the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge; and the UCL Special Collections reading room at the National Archives. For permission to reproduce images of items in their collections, I am grateful to the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Bodleian Library and Cornell University Library. The Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex has been a welcoming and supportive place in which to study, and I would like to extend my gratitude and best wishes to all staff and students who have been members over the past six years, especially to my fellow travellers, my fellow PhD students. Special mention must go to Chris Whittick’s invaluable palaeography teaching at East Sussex Record Office. I would also like to acknowledge with gratitude the book history community on Twitter for frequently invaluable advice and assistance, and Dr Astrid Stilma for information on the Dutch translations of James I’s Daemonologie. Finally, my biggest debt of gratitude is to Em, for putting up with me all this time. For like as when, rough winter spent, The pleasant spring straight draweth in ure, So after ragyng stormes of care Joyful at length may be my fare. – Surrey v Contents Summary iii Acknowledgements iv List of figures vi Editorial conventions vii Abbreviations of frequently cited reference works and holding libraries viii Introduction 1 Part 1: Origins and literary contexts 1.1 Witchcraft theory 10 1.2 Witchcraft in the news 29 1.3 Drama 55 1.4 Ballads 70 Part 2: Production and dissemination 2.1 Publishers, printers and booksellers 79 2.2 Reprints and reissues 96 Part 3: Reception 3.1 Witchcraft books in private libraries 106 3.2 Binding 119 3.3 Public responses 127 3.4 Private responses 145 Conclusion 175 Reference list Manuscript sources 180 Primary printed sources 180 Secondary sources 192 Appendices 1. Chronological list of English works on witchcraft, 1560-1660 201 2. Identification of previously unidentified Stationers 207 3. Copies of witchcraft books in private libraries, 1560-1700 209 vi List of figures 1. Production of sensational news pamphlets by year, 1560-1660. 2. Decorated limp vellum binding on Thomas Cooper, The Mystery Of Witch-craft, Folger Shakespeare Library shelfmark: STC 5701. Photograph by the author. 3. Possibly contemporary sheepskin binding on John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching VVitches and VVitchcrafts, Folger Shakespeare Library shelfmark: 156-285q. Photographs by the author. 4. Page from Reginald Scot, The Discouerie of Witchcraft, EEBO (Huntington Library) [available at: http://gateway.proquest.com.ezproxy.sussex.ac.uk/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:44:124]. 5. Detail from the title-page of A True Relation Of the Araignment Of Thirty Witches, Folger Shakespeare Library shelfmark: 257533. Photograph by the author. 6. Page from The Wonderfvl Discoverie Of The Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip Flower, Cornell University Library [available at: http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer- idx?c=witch;cc=witch;idno=wit106;node=wit106%3A3;view=image;seq=23;size=100;page =root]. 7. A contemporary reader’s personal index from James Mason, The Anatomie Of Sorcerie, The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, shelfmark: 4° I 18 Th., sig. O2v. Photograph by the author. 8. Pages from George Gifford, A Discourse of the subtill Practises of Deuilles by VVitches and Sorcerers, EEBO (Huntington Library) [available at: http://gateway.proquest.com.ezproxy. sussex.ac.uk/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image: 3288:26]. 9. Front free endpaper, verso, from Thomas Cooper, The Mystery Of Witch-craft, Folger Shakespeare Library shelfmark: STC 5701. Photograph by the author. vii Editorial conventions Spelling and punctuation in quotation from printed sources follows the original, with the following exceptions: spacing has been regularised; where a tittle is given over a vowel (indicating an omitted letter) the contraction is silently expanded; all other contractions are unexpanded. Black letter text is given in roman type; where roman type appears in black letter texts it is given here in italic. The long ſ and other obsolete typographical variations have not been reproduced. Titles are given in their original form; this often differs between editions. Therefore the form of the specific edition being referred to is used; when no specific edition is being referred to, the form of the first edition is used. In titles of works, words in all capitals or small capitals are given here with only their first letter capitalised. Otherwise capitalisation follows the original. Use of italics and different typefaces is not distinguished in citations of titles; titles are entirely italicised, except in quotations from title-pages. Names have been regularised. Place names are given in their modern English form. Dates are given in ‘new style’. The same conventions are applied to transcriptions of manuscript sources, with the following additions. Annotations are found with distressing regularity to have been cropped by later binders; where cropped words can be reconstructed, the missing portions are given in square brackets. Otherwise omitted letters are also indicated within square brackets. Unclear words are noted with a question mark in square brackets; set close to the word where a reasonable conjecture has been made; set in place of the word where no conjecture has been possible. Lineation of manuscript marginal notes has not been retained. viii Abbreviations of frequently cited reference works and holding libraries Arber Arber, E., A Transcript of the Register of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554-1640 A.D., 5 vols, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967. BL The British Library, London. Bodleian The Bodleian Library, Oxford. Codrington The Codrington Library, All Soul’s College, Oxford. Cornell Cornell University Library, NY; witchcraft collection available online at: http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/w/witch. CUL Cambridge University Library. DNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.), ed. L. Goldman, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, available at http://www. oxforddnb.com. EBBA English Broadside Ballad Archive, available at http://ebba.english. ucsb.edu. EEBO Early English Books Online, available at http://eebo.chadwyck.com. ESTC English Short Title Catalogue, available at http://estc.bl.uk. Folger The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.