Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England

An account of the handwritten pamphlet literature of early Stuart England that explains how contemporaries came to see events as political.

Noah Millstone (Author)

9781107543737, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 November 2017

374 pages, 13 b/w illus.
23 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.56 kg

'Millstone has produced a deeply researched and highly sophisticated book that will be of the greatest interest to scholars and students of early seventeenth-century England. He has an admirable capacity to delineate detail without ever losing sight of the broader picture. … In guiding us elegantly through the surviving products of early Stuart scribes it whets the appetite for future works from the author's own pen.' David L. Smith, The English Historical Review

In the decades before the Civil War, English readers confronted an extensive and influential pamphlet literature. This literature addressed contemporary events in scathingly critical terms, was produced in enormous quantities and was devoured by the curious. Despite widespread contemporary interest and an enormous number of surviving copies, this literature has remained almost entirely unknown to scholars because it was circulated in handwriting rather than printed with movable type. Drawing from book history, the sociology of knowledge and the history of political thought, Noah Millstone provides the first systematic account of the production, circulation and reception of these manuscript pamphlets. By placing them in the context of social change, state formation, and the emergence of 'politic' expertise, Millstone uses the pamphlets to resolve one of the central problems of early Stuart history: how and why did the men and women of early seventeenth-century England come to see their world as political?

1. Introduction
Part I. Conditions of Production: 2. The social life of handwriting
3. Tuning the instrument
4. Performance and parliament
Part II. Subjects and Subjectivity: 5. Bristol's revenge
6. Historians of the present
Part III. The Secret History of the State: 7. The antiquary and the malcontent
8. The drift of the personal rule
9. The ill-affected
10. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1], Prints & printmaking [AFH]