This collection of essays focuses attention on the broad issue of Renaissance textuality. It explores such topics as the position of the reader relative to the text; the impact of editorial strategies and modes of presentation on our understanding of the text; the complexities of extended textual histories; and the relevance of gender to the process of textual retrieval and preservation. The volume is closely informed by recent developments in textual theory which have led to a probing interrogation of traditional understandings of the early modern textual world and of how we should edit, disseminate and encounter the Renaissance text in our own time. The essays, whilst informed by contemporary theory, are not dominated by a single programmatic viewpoint. Reflecting the multiplicitous nature of Renaissance textuality, the collection provides space for a variety of different positions and lines of analysis and enquiry. The Renaissance text will be of interest to those with specialist concerns in editing, textuality and bibliography, and will also be of interest to those more generally concerned with Renaissance literature or with textual or literary history. Contributors include Gary Taylor, Stephen Orgel, Peter Stallybrass, Leah S. Marcus and John Pitcher.

Beginning by mapping out an overview of the expansion of elementary education in Britain across the nineteenth century, Andrew Murphy explores, for the first time, the manner in which Shakespeare acquired a working-class readership. He traces developments in publishing which meant that editions of Shakespeare became ever cheaper as the century progressed. Drawing on more than a hundred published and manuscript autobiographical texts, the book examines the experiences of a wide range of working-class readers. Particular attention is focused on a set of radical readers for whom Shakespeare's work had a special political resonance. Murphy explores the reasons why the playwright's working-class readership began to fall away from the turn of the century, noting the competition he faced from professional sports, the cinema, radio and television. The book concludes by asking whether it matters that, in our own time, Shakespeare no longer commands a general popular audience.

Shakespeare and Scotland is a timely collection of new essays in which leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic address a neglected national context for an exemplary body of dramatic work too often viewed within a narrow English milieu or against a broad British backdrop. These essays explore, from a variety of critical perspectives, the playwright's place in Scotland and the place of Scotland in his work. From critical reception to dramatic and cinematic adaptation, the contributors engage with the complexity of Shakespeare's Scotland and Scotland's Shakespeare. The influence of Scotland on Shakespeare's writing, and later on his reception, is set alongside the dramatic effects that Shakespeare's work had on the development of Scottish literature, from the Globe to globalisation, and from Captain Jamy and King James to radical productions at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow. -- .

Atypical demonstratives have not received adequate attention in the literature so far, or have even been completely neglected. By providing fresh insights and discussing new facets, this volume contributes to the better understanding of this group of words, starting from specific empirical phenomena, and advances our knowledge of the various properties of demonstratives, their syntactic multi-functionality, semantic feature specifications and pragmatic functions. In addition, some of the papers discuss different grammaticalization processes involving demonstratives, in particular how and from which lexical and morphosyntactic categories they originate cross-linguistically, and which semantic or pragmatic mechanisms play which role in their emergence. As such, the different contributions guide the readers on an adventurous journey into the realm of different exotic species of demonstratives, whose peculiar properties offer new exiting insights into the complex nature of demonstrative expressions themselves.

The "Shakespearean Originals" series aims to provide readers of modern drama with 16th- and 17th-century playtexts which have been treated as historical documents, and are reproduced as closely to their original printed forms as the conditions of modern publication will permit. Each volume in the series comprises a general series introduction, an introduction to the play, the original text, a select bibliography, full annotations and some sample facsimile pages from the text itself.

This comprehensive reference surveys the editing and publishing of Shakespeare's texts from the Renaissance through our own time. Andrew Murphy not only covers all of the major scholarly editions. He also includes mass market popular editions and ranges widely across the rich field of Shakespeare publishing. Murphy's comprehensive listing of major Shakespeare editions makes this volume an invaluable basic research resource.

The Nation and British Literature and Culture charts the emergence of Britain as a political, social and cultural construct, examining the manner in which its constituent elements were brought together through a process of amalgamation and conquest. The fashioning of the nation through literature and culture is examined, as well as counter narratives that have sought to call national orthodoxies into question. Specific topics explored include the emergence of a distinctively national literature in the early modern period; the impact of French Revolution on conceptions of Britishness; portrayals of empire in popular and literary fiction; popular music and national imagining; the marginalisation and oppression of particular communities within the nation. The volume concludes by asking what implications an extended set of contemporary crises have for the ongoing survival both of the United Kingdom, both as a political unit and as a literary and cultural point of identity.

This reprint includes the first five generations of John Muse of Westmoreland County, Virginia and his descendants. Over 1,000 Muse family ancestors are identified, with sixty-two documented biographies, listings of children, grandchildren and marriages. Also includes information on Muse family research sources, the Muse family English connection, the Muse and Washington family connection. This 2012 reprint also includes six pages of additions and corrections to the 1994 edition. Fully indexed.

In collaboration with Mrs. Lou Andrews Murphy and Robert T. Muse, this reprint of the 1997 edition includes late eighteenth and nineteenth century descendants of John Muse of Westmoreland County, Virginia, as well as some unconnected Muse families. Over 800 Muse family ancestors are identified, documented biographies, listings of children, grandchildren and marriages. Fully indexed.

" At the rise of the Tudor age, England began to form a national identity. With that sense of self came the beginnings of the colonialist notion of the ""other."" Ireland, however, proved a most difficult other because it was so closely linked, both culturally and geographically, to England. Ireland's colonial position was especially complex because of the political, religious, and ethnic heritage it shared with England. Andrew Murphy asserts that the Irish were seen not as absolute but as ""proximate"" others. As a result, English writing about Ireland was a problematic process, since standard colonial stereotypes never quite fit the Irish. But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us examines the English view of the ""imperfect"" other by looking at Ireland through works by Spenser, Jonson, and Shakespeare. Murphy also considers a broad range of materials from the Renaissance period, including journals, pamphlets, histories, and state papers.

The emergence of an Irish 'common reader' in the nineteenth century had significant implications for the evolution of Irish cultural nationalism. The rise of literacy rates prompted a cultural crisis, with nationalists fearing that the beneficiaries of mass education were being drawn to populist publications emanating from London which were having the effect of eroding Irish identity and corrupting Irish morals. This fear prompted an intensification of cultural nationalist activity at the turn of the century. Andrew Murphy's study, which includes a chapter on W. B. Yeats and the Irish reader, moves freely between historical and literary analysis, and demonstrates how a developing sense of cultural crisis served as an engine for the Irish literary revival. Examining responses to Irish reading habits advanced by a wide range of cultural commentators, Murphy provides a nuanced discussion of theories of nationalism and examines attempts finally to control reading habits through the introduction of censorship.

In this second edition of his popular book on Heaney, Andrew Murphy charts the trajectory of Heaney’s career as a poet and places his work within its various contexts. Seamus Heaney is one of the foremost poets of his generation and his work is highly prized by scholars and general readers alike. It is a measure of his success as a writer, and of the high-esteem in which he is held, that he has been appointed to professorships at both Harvard and Oxford and that he was, in 1995 awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The appeal of Heaney’s poetry lies in its gracefulness, its meticulous attention to the sound and structure of language, and the range of topics engaged by the poet – from the precise particularity of the local and the familial to greater political, social and cultural themes. Heaney’s poetry is seen within the framework of the Irish poetic tradition and the poet is also located within his crucial social and political context as a writer from the North of Ireland, who seeks a fruitful engagement with the conflicts affecting his homeland. Heaney emerges from this clearly written study as a complex and multi-faceted figure, passionately engaged by poetry and politics alike.

Beginning by mapping out an overview of the expansion of elementary education in Britain across the nineteenth century, Andrew Murphy explores the manner in which Shakespeare acquired a working-class readership. He traces developments in publishing which meant that editions of Shakespeare became ever cheaper as the century progressed. Drawing on more than a hundred published and manuscript autobiographical texts, the book examines the experiences of a wide range of working-class readers. Particular attention is focused on a set of radical readers for whom Shakespeare's work had a special political resonance. Murphy explores the reasons why the playwright's working-class readership began to fall away from the turn of the century, noting the competition he faced from professional sports, the cinema, radio and television. The book concludes by asking whether it matters that, in our own time, Shakespeare no longer commands a general popular audience.