A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in Romantic-era BritainOffers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of manuscripts, based on extensive archival researchDemonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two mediaExamines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts, and how these changes affected practices and valuesSurveys the impact of digital media on our access to and understanding of historical manuscriptsThis book examines how manuscript practices interacted with an expanding print marketplace to nurture and transform the period's literary culture. It unearths the alternative histories manuscripts tell us about British Romantic literary culture, describing the practices by which handwritten documents were written, shared, altered and preserved, and explores the functions they served as instruments of expression and sociability. By demonstrating how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, this study illuminates the complex entanglements between the media of script and print.

A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in Romantic-era BritainOffers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of manuscripts, based on extensive archival researchDemonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two mediaExamines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts, and how these changes affected practices and valuesSurveys the impact of digital media on our access to and understanding of historical manuscriptsThis book examines how manuscript practices interacted with an expanding print marketplace to nurture and transform the period's literary culture. It unearths the alternative histories manuscripts tell us about British Romantic literary culture, describing the practices by which handwritten documents were written, shared, altered and preserved, and explores the functions they served as instruments of expression and sociability. By demonstrating how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, this study illuminates the complex entanglements between the media of script and print.

Highlights the centrality of non-canonical, middle-ranking women writers to the production of literature and culture in Britain, Ireland, Europe and Russia in the late eighteenth century. The Irish writers and editors Katherine (1773-1824) and Martha Wilmot (1775-1873) left a unique record of middle-ranking women's literary practices and experiences of travel in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Their manuscripts are notable for their vivid portrayal of the era's political conflicts, capturing a flight from Ireland during the Irish Rebellion (1798), time spent in Paris during the Peace of Amiens (1801-03), and extended residences in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. However, in their accounts of these key European events, the Wilmots' manuscripts, and published work, showcase their participation in a startling range of self-educating activities, including travel writing, biography, antiquarianism, early ethnographic observation, language acquisition, translation practices and editorial work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book explores the collaborative relationships formed by women participating in cosmopolitan networks beyond the typical locations of the Grand Tour. Across their travels, the sisters met, engaged with, and learned from numerous key women of the time, including Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, Margaret King, Lady Mount Cashell and Helen Maria Williams. In this first full-length study to focus on the literary and cultural exchanges surrounding the Wilmot sisters, Wolf showcases how manuscript circulation, coterie engagement and transnational travel provided avenues for women to engage with the intellectual discourses from which they were often excluded.

Modern literary archives play a key role in how authors’ lives and works get canonized and consecrated as cultural heritage. This interdisciplinary volume combines literary studies, book history, textual criticism, heritage studies, archival theory, and the digital humanities to examine the past, present, and future of literary archiving. Featuring contributions from leading international scholars and archive professionals, the book explores the objects, practices, and institutions that have been at the heart of the modern archival landscape since its emergence in the nineteenth century. Covering a wide range of questions, the volume reconstructs how literary manuscripts turned into secular relics and analyzes the impact that the rise of the archive has had on the scholarly study and public perception of literature as cultural heritage. Individual chapters range from historical accounts of the Romantic origins of manuscript worship to critical discussions of the archiving of contemporary writers’ born-digital material.

This Element examines eighteenth-century manuscript forms, their functions in the literary landscape of their time, and the challenges and practices of manuscript study today. Drawing on both literary studies and book history, Levy and Schellenberg offer a guide to the principal forms of literary activity carried out in handwritten manuscripts produced in the first era of print dominance, 1730-1820. After an opening survey of sociable literary culture and its manuscript forms, numerous case studies explore what can be learned from three manuscript types: the verse miscellany, the familiar correspondence, and manuscripts of literary works that were printed. A final section considers issues of manuscript remediation up to the present, focusing particularly on digital remediation. The Element concludes with a brief case study of the movement of Phillis Wheatley's poems between manuscript and print. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

What did Wordsworth wear, and where did he walk? Who was Byron’s new mistress, and how did his marriage fare? Answers—sometimes accurate, sometimes not—were tantalizingly at the ready in the Romantic era, when confessional poetry, romans à clef, personal essays, and gossip columns offered readers exceptional access to well-known authors. But at what point did familiarity become overfamiliarity? Widely recognized as a social virtue, familiarity—a feeling of emotional closeness or comforting predictability—could also be dangerous, vulgar, or boring. In The Limits of Familiarity, Eckert persuasively argues that such concerns shaped literary production in the Romantic period. Bringing together reception studies, celebrity studies, and literary history to reveal how anxieties about familiarity shaped both Romanticism and conceptions of authorship, this book encourages us to reflect in our own fraught historical moment on the distinction between telling all and telling all too much.

The first book to analyze the interplay of cultural memory, politics and the changing media ecology of early eighteenth-century Britain.