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The Most Disreputable Trade - Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810 (Hardcover)
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The Most Disreputable Trade - Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810 (Hardcover)
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A publishing phenomenon began in Glasgow in 1765. Uniform pocket
editions of the English Poets printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis
formed the first link in a chain of literary products that has
grown ever since, as we see from series like Penguin Classics and
Oxford World Classics. Bonnell explores the origins of this
phenomenon, analysing more than a dozen multi-volume poetry
collections that sprang from the British press over the next half
century. Why such collections flourished so quickly, who published
them, what forms they assumed, how they were marketed and
advertised, how they initiated their readers into the rites of
mass-market consumerism, and what role they played in the
construction of a national literature are all questions central to
the study.
The collections played out against an epic battle over copyright
law, and involved fierce contention for market share in the
"classics" among rival publishers. It brought despair to the most
powerful of London printers, William Strahan, who prophesied that
competition of this nature would ruin bookselling, turning it into
"the most pitiful, beggarly, precarious, unprofitable, and
disreputable Trade in Britain."
Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets were part of such a
collection, dubbed "Johnson's Poets." The third edition of this
collection, published in 1810, brought the national project to its
high water mark: it contained 129 poets, plus extensive
translations from the Greek and Roman classics. By this point, all
the features that characterize modern series of vernacular classics
had been established, and never since has such an ambitious
expression of the poetic canon been repeated, as Bonnell shows by
peering forwardinto the nineteenth century and beyond.
Based on work with archival materials, newspapers, handbills,
prospectuses, and above all the books themselves, Bonnell's
findings shed light on all aspects of the book trade. Valuable
bibliographical data is presented regarding every collection,
forming an indispensable resource for future work on the history of
the English poetry canon.
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