Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade

An original study of Milton's authorship and the material production of his texts in relation to the booktrade.

Stephen B. Dobranski (Author)

9780521119009, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 September 2009

260 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

"Professor Dobranski's book is a fine example of the bibliographic work which is currently being done by scholars on Renaissance authors....this is a book that helps us understand a great deal more about the material circumstances within which a great poet worked." Sixteenth Century Journal

This study offers an original exploration of Milton's relationship to the seventeenth-century book trade. Critics have often assumed that Milton presided over all stages of his texts' creation, and little has been said about his dependence on other people for producing his works. Examining Milton's changing historical circumstances with special attention to his texts' material production, Stephen B. Dobranski shows in a series of provocative and original case studies that Milton benefited from a collaborative process of writing and publishing. He worked with amanuenses, acquaintances, printers and publishers, often in dramatic and surprising ways: paradoxically, Milton's implied persona of the independent, even isolated, poet required the cooperation of these various individuals. With the attentiveness of textual scholarship and booktrade history to the material forms of publication, Dobranski offers fresh insight into the practice of authorship and the meaning of Milton's works.

Introduction: the author John Milton
1. The labor of book-writing and book-making
2. Restoring Samson Agonistes
3. The myth of the solitary genius
4. Fair Milton's counterfeit
5. Letters and spirit in Areopagitica
6. The mystery of Milton as licenser
7. The poet John Milton, 1673
Afterword.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]