Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In
Making the Miscellany, Megan Heffernan makes a significant contribution to the study of the poetic design of early modern printed books, how volumes of compiled poems responded to changes in media, the material organization of printed poetry, the contribution of conventions and innovations of arrangement to vernacular poetic craft, and the consolidation of individual authorship...Heffernan has untangled the tangled tale of book matter, design, printing, culture, and history in relation to the making and reading of poetry then and now." * Renaissance and Reformation *
"Upon first notice,
Making the Miscellany appears as another well-stated and strong scholarly contribution to literary studies, but that would be deceiving; it is much more. The author has thrown new light upon previously understood conventions and scholarship focused on poetry and compilations and miscellanies of poetry...Beyond the in-depth scholarly apparatus utilized in
Making the Miscellany, the author has provided a very engaging and highly readable style. Rich in technical asides in text and notes, this book opens up new scholarly ground and serves as a requisite and indispensable measure of scholarship that traverses different scholarship fields as well as opportunities for further exploration." * Publishing Research Quarterly *
"By decentering the author as the imagined source and originator of the poetry collection, Megan Heffernan is able to attend to the agency of stationers and compilers, as well as the agency of poetry itself. In one of her most exciting claims, Heffernan argues that the poetry shapes the material form of the printed book in these early poetry collections. Indeed, she shows, these innovative arrangements shaped the development of vernacular poetic craft and notions of authorship in the seventeenth century and after." * Jenny C. Mann, author of
The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime *
