A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in Romantic-era BritainOffers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of manuscripts, based on extensive archival researchDemonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two mediaExamines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts, and how these changes affected practices and valuesSurveys the impact of digital media on our access to and understanding of historical manuscriptsThis book examines how manuscript practices interacted with an expanding print marketplace to nurture and transform the period's literary culture. It unearths the alternative histories manuscripts tell us about British Romantic literary culture, describing the practices by which handwritten documents were written, shared, altered and preserved, and explores the functions they served as instruments of expression and sociability. By demonstrating how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, this study illuminates the complex entanglements between the media of script and print.

A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in Romantic-era BritainOffers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of manuscripts, based on extensive archival researchDemonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two mediaExamines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts, and how these changes affected practices and valuesSurveys the impact of digital media on our access to and understanding of historical manuscriptsThis book examines how manuscript practices interacted with an expanding print marketplace to nurture and transform the period's literary culture. It unearths the alternative histories manuscripts tell us about British Romantic literary culture, describing the practices by which handwritten documents were written, shared, altered and preserved, and explores the functions they served as instruments of expression and sociability. By demonstrating how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, this study illuminates the complex entanglements between the media of script and print.

Highlights the centrality of non-canonical, middle-ranking women writers to the production of literature and culture in Britain, Ireland, Europe and Russia in the late eighteenth century. The Irish writers and editors Katherine (1773-1824) and Martha Wilmot (1775-1873) left a unique record of middle-ranking women's literary practices and experiences of travel in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Their manuscripts are notable for their vivid portrayal of the era's political conflicts, capturing a flight from Ireland during the Irish Rebellion (1798), time spent in Paris during the Peace of Amiens (1801-03), and extended residences in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. However, in their accounts of these key European events, the Wilmots' manuscripts, and published work, showcase their participation in a startling range of self-educating activities, including travel writing, biography, antiquarianism, early ethnographic observation, language acquisition, translation practices and editorial work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book explores the collaborative relationships formed by women participating in cosmopolitan networks beyond the typical locations of the Grand Tour. Across their travels, the sisters met, engaged with, and learned from numerous key women of the time, including Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, Margaret King, Lady Mount Cashell and Helen Maria Williams. In this first full-length study to focus on the literary and cultural exchanges surrounding the Wilmot sisters, Wolf showcases how manuscript circulation, coterie engagement and transnational travel provided avenues for women to engage with the intellectual discourses from which they were often excluded.

Modern literary archives play a key role in how authors’ lives and works get canonized and consecrated as cultural heritage. This interdisciplinary volume combines literary studies, book history, textual criticism, heritage studies, archival theory, and the digital humanities to examine the past, present, and future of literary archiving. Featuring contributions from leading international scholars and archive professionals, the book explores the objects, practices, and institutions that have been at the heart of the modern archival landscape since its emergence in the nineteenth century. Covering a wide range of questions, the volume reconstructs how literary manuscripts turned into secular relics and analyzes the impact that the rise of the archive has had on the scholarly study and public perception of literature as cultural heritage. Individual chapters range from historical accounts of the Romantic origins of manuscript worship to critical discussions of the archiving of contemporary writers’ born-digital material.

The first book to analyze the interplay of cultural memory, politics and the changing media ecology of early eighteenth-century Britain.

What did Wordsworth wear, and where did he walk? Who was Byron’s new mistress, and how did his marriage fare? Answers—sometimes accurate, sometimes not—were tantalizingly at the ready in the Romantic era, when confessional poetry, romans à clef, personal essays, and gossip columns offered readers exceptional access to well-known authors. But at what point did familiarity become overfamiliarity? Widely recognized as a social virtue, familiarity—a feeling of emotional closeness or comforting predictability—could also be dangerous, vulgar, or boring. In The Limits of Familiarity, Eckert persuasively argues that such concerns shaped literary production in the Romantic period. Bringing together reception studies, celebrity studies, and literary history to reveal how anxieties about familiarity shaped both Romanticism and conceptions of authorship, this book encourages us to reflect in our own fraught historical moment on the distinction between telling all and telling all too much.

Literary drafts are a constant in literatures of all ages and linguistic areas, and yet their role in writing processes in various traditions has seldom been the subject of systematic comparative scrutiny. In 38 chapters written by leading experts in many different fields, this book charts a comparative history of the literary draft in Europe and beyond. It is organised according to eight categories of comparison distributed over the volume’s two parts, devoted respectively to ‘Text’ (i.e. the textual aspects of creative processes) and ‘Beyond Text’ (i.e. aspects of creative processes that are not necessarily textual). Across geographical, temporal, linguistic, generic and media boundaries, to name but a few, this book uncovers idiosyncrasies and parallels in the surviving traces of human creativity while drawing the reader’s attention to the materiality of literary drafts and the ephemerality of the writing process they capture.

Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period illuminates the diverse ways that people in the British regional print trades exerted their agency through interventions in regional and national politics as well as their civic, commercial, and cultural contributions. Works printed in regional communities were a crucial part of developing narratives of local industrial, technological, and ideological progression. By moving away from understanding of print cultures outside of London as ‘provincial’, however, this book argues for a new understanding of ‘region’ as part of a network of places, emphasising opportunities for collaboration and creation that demonstrate the key role of regions within larger communities extending from the nation to the emerging sense of globality in this period. Through investigations of the men and women of the print trades outside of London, this collection casts new light on the strategies of self-representation evident in the work of regional print cultures, as well as their contributions to individual regional identities and national narratives.

The eighteenth century has generally been understood as the Age of Print, when the new medium revolutionized the literary world and rendered manuscript culture obsolete. After Print, however, reveals that the story isn’t so simple. Manuscript remained a vital, effective, and even preferred forum for professional and amateur authors working across fields such as literature, science, politics, religion, and business through the Romantic period. The contributors to this book offer a survey of the manuscript culture of the time, discussing handwritten culinary recipes, the poetry of John Keats, Benjamin Franklin’s letters about his electrical experiments, and more. Collectively, the essays demonstrate that what has often been seen as the amateur, feminine, and aristocratic world of handwritten exchange thrived despite the spread of the printed word. In so doing, they undermine the standard print-manuscript binary and advocate for a critical stance that better understands the important relationship between the media. Bringing together work from literary scholars, librarians, and digital humanists, the diverse essays in After Print offer a new model for archival research, pulling from an exciting variety of fields to demonstrate that manuscript culture did not die out but, rather, may have been revitalized by the advent of printing. Contributors: Leith Davis, Simon Fraser University * Margaret J. M. Ezell, Texas A&M University * Emily C. Friedman, Auburn University * Kathryn R. King, University of Montevallo * Michelle Levy, Simon Fraser University * Marissa Nicosia, Penn State Abington * Philip S. Palmer, Morgan Library and Museum * Colin T. Ramsey, Appalachian State University * Brian Rejack, Illinois State University * Beth Fowkes Tobin, University of Georgia * Andrew O. Winckles, Adrian College

This provocative and timely volume examines the activity of seeking justice through literature during the 'age of revolutions' from 1750 to 1850 - a period which was marked by efforts to expand political and human rights and to rethink attitudes towards poverty and criminality. While the chapters revolve around legal topics, they concentrate on literary engagements with the experience of the law, revealing how people perceived the fairness of a given legal order and worked with and against regulations to adjust the rule of law to the demands of conscience. The volume updates analysis of this conflict between law and equity by drawing on the concept of 'epistemic injustice' to describe the harm done to personal identity and collective flourishing by the uneven distribution of resources and the wish to punish breaches of order. It shows how writing and reading can foment inquiries into the meanings of 'justice' and 'equity' and aid efforts to humanise the rule of law.