Perhaps more than any other kind of book, manuscript miscellanies require a complex and ’material’ reading strategy. This collection of essays engages the renewed and expanding interest in early modern English miscellanies, anthologies, and other compilations. Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England models and refines the study of these complicated collections. Several of its contributors question and redefine the terms we use to describe miscellanies and anthologies. Two senior scholars correct the misidentification of a scribe and, in so doing, uncover evidence of a Catholic, probably Jesuit, priest and community in a trio of manuscripts. Additional contributors show compilers interpreting, attributing, and arranging texts, as well as passively accepting others’ editorial decisions. While manuscript verse miscellanies remain appropriately central to the collection, several essays also involve print and prose, ranging from letters to sermons and even political prophesies. Using extensive textual and bibliographical evidence, the collection offers stimulating new readings of literature, politics, and religion in the early modern period, and promises to make important interventions in academic studies of the history of the book.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 2 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

Dryden's last three years of published works begin with Alexander's Feast and end with Fables, his largest miscellany of poetical translations. Alexander's Feast, like the earlier Song for St. Cecilia's Day (Works, III), was commissioned by the Musical Society for performance at its annual tribute to sacred music. The Fables included selections from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Extensive and detailed notes to these translations show readers how well Dryden succeeded in transmitting the styles and the very sounds of his originals. Volume VII ends with a section of miscellaneous pieces published at other times, including Dryden's only known Latin work. The presentation of the writings in this volume, like that of the entire twenty-volume series, is a tribute not only to Dryden but also to the editors who have guided it through five decades.