Literary Sociability in Early Modern England by Trolander Paul;

Author:Trolander, Paul;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sharing: News, Information,

and Opinion among Literary Networks

Because the number of news reports and amount of information sent and received was much greater than for most other literary actions I found in the letters, I had the opportunity to generalize about how reader and author networks handled these items. I was especially interested to see whether individuals who circulated news and information did so without discrimination about who in their discourse field received it, or preferred to circulate this within one specific network of readers and authors. There was a total of about 1,600 such actions, including news reports of literary activity (from the letter writer’s own firsthand account, or from secondhand accounts, including printed news and gossip), research information forwarded to authors for their writing projects, and copied excerpts drawn from printed books or manuscript texts that were also sent for research purposes.

The first of these three news items (813 in all) can be further divided into those items that tended to be news about a specific network of authors and facilitators, usually to keep associates abreast of the work their peers were involved in, and news reports of issues and events either of local or national interest that letter writers believed their readers would appreciate hearing. In either case news usually only circulated to family, friends, or author networks because the letter writer believed the news was directly relevant to issues these circles were engaged in. Jonathan Swift chattily discussed his interactions with his writing peers and his political superiors in his letters to Esther Johnson (Stella), often highlighting the reception of his own works either among cliques of politicos and authors or the wider reading public.[53] Robert Baillie wrote to William Spang about the pamphlet wars related to the religious politics at the Westminster Assembly, many skirmishes in which Baillie and his peers had participated.[54] Lady Mary Pierrepont Montagu reported theater and pageant news, as well as geographical and social realities of Ottoman Turkey, to literary friends back in England and elsewhere.[55]

Most of the news that was connected to specific author networks was used to keep authors and their associates abreast of developments in their field as well as how individuals’ projects were progressing. There were over 200 separate author reports to associates and important facilitators that relayed news of one another’s ongoing projects or plans for publication. Those individuals who received such news were for the most part also active in other “news” and “inform” actions connecting them to their networks. Other significant measures of network connections were associate reports to authors (nearly 100) concerning the public reception of their works, many of which reported how authors’ works were regarded by competing authors and networks or celebrity consumers and patrons. Another related set of reports from associate to associate (90) discussed authors and their texts that both associates knew in common. For instance, Thomas Blount often relayed news of William Dugdale’s and Elias Ashmole’s progress on their book projects to Anthony à Wood, just as he relayed Wood’s progress to Dugdale.

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