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The publication of plays in London 1660-1800 : playwrights, publishers, and the market / Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume.
Kislak Center for Special Collections - Furness Shakespeare Library (Van Pelt 628) Z326 .M55 2015
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Milhous, Judith, author.
- Hume, Robert D., author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Literature publishing--England--London--History--17th century.
- Literature publishing.
- Literature publishing--England--London--History--18th century.
- Literature publishing--England--London--History--19th century.
- Drama--Publishing--England--London--History--17th century.
- Drama.
- Drama--Publishing--England--London--History--18th century.
- Drama--Publishing--England--London--History--19th century.
- Drama--Publishing.
- History.
- England--London.
- Genre:
- History.
- Physical Description:
- xxvi, 483 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
- Manufacture:
- [England] : Sparks Publishing Services Ltd.
- England : Printed in England by TJ International.
- Place of Publication:
- London : The British Library, 2015.
- Summary:
- A great deal of bibliographic and historical scholarship has been devoted to English drama up to 1660, but after the renaissance scholarship grows scant: late 17th-century plays have received little such attention, and 18th-century plays hardly any. This ground-breaking study by two internationally renowned scholars in theater history asks fundamental questions that have often been previously ignored - Who published plays? What was the cost of publication, the risk, and the potential profit? What did single plays cost, and what did play collections cost? How much market existed for used copies and at what prices? What did playwrights earn from publication, and how important was it to their income? What was the function of illustrations in published plays, and what can we learn from these illustrations?
- Contents:
- Prologue Play Publication Before 1660 1
- Scholarship on Early Seventeenth-Century English Play Publication 3
- Did Theatre Companies Block Publication of their Plays? 6
- Why Did So Many Plays Fail to Reach Print? 8
- How Many Plays Were Published - And How Many Were Performed? 11
- Literariness, Anonymity, and the Construction of Authorship 13
- The Attribution of Published Plays 19
- How Plays Got to Publishers 22
- The Involvement of the Playwright in Publication 26
- Addendum September 2013 30
- Part I The Publication of New Plays After 1660 31
- 1 The Age of the Quarto, 1660-1715 33
- I What a Playbook Contains 33
- II Performance Rights and Publication Rights 43
- The Tangled History of Publication Rights and 'Play Right' 45
- III Playwrights and the Publication Process 47
- Sale of Copy 48
- Licensing 51
- The Involvement of Playwrights in Publication 52
- Time Lapse between Performance and Publication 54
- IV The Business of Publishing 57
- What Gets Published and by Whom? 57
- Bookseller-publisher Shop Locations 58
- Cost, Price, and Potential Profits 61
- Advertising 63
- False Imprints, Piracy, and Forgery 70
- The Publication of Plays in London circa 1710 74
- 2 The Era or Octavo and Duodecimo, 1715-1000 77
- I The Format Revolution 79
- II The Impact of the Copyright Act (1710) and the Licensing Act (1737) 83
- The Statute of Anne 83
- Walpole's Licensing Act 88
- III The Business of Publishing 92
- Who were the Bookseller-publishers? 94
- Publishers' Locations 96
- Prices and Print Runs 98
- 'Published for the Author' and Cost Implications 100
- Advertising, Publicity, and Dissemination of Texts in the Theatre 103
- Imports, Local Piracies, and Forgeries 107
- IV Changing Theatres and Their Impact on Plays 113
- What Qualifies as a Play? 115
- Delaying or Preventing Publication 117
- The Changing Nature of the Drama 120
- Part II Financial Contexts 123
- 3 Income Levels, the Value of Money, and the Price of Plays 125
- I Income Levels According to Xing, Massie, and Colquhoun 126
- Gregory King and the Social Table for 1688 128
- Joseph Massie and the Social Table of 1759 132
- Patrick Colquhoun and the Social Table of 1801-1803 134
- II The Value of Money 137
- III The Price of Plays 143
- The Cibber Collection of 1721 146
- John Gay's Polly 148
- The Economics of the First Hour Tonson Editions of Shakespeare, 1709-1733 153
- 4 Playwrights' Remuneration 163
- I The Sale of Copy and What It Brought the Playwright 164
- Sale of Copy in the Late Seventeenth Century 165
- Sale of Copy between 1700 and 1714 167
- Copy Prices from 1715 to the Licensing Act of 7737 167
- Copy Prices from 1737 to 7776 170
- Copy Prices from 1776 to 1800 173
- II Dedications, Self-Publication, and Other Issues 175
- Dedications 175
- Purchase of Copyright by the Theatre 182
- Self-Publication by the Playwright 186
- A Special Case: Macklin's Love a la Mode 188
- III The Importance of Publication to Playwrights' Earnings 195
- Two Contextual Issues 198
- Analytic Observations 201
- IV Could an Author Make a Living From Plays? 202
- Part III Catalogues, Reprints, Collections, and Illustrations 207
- 5 Playlists, Reprints, and Collections 209
- I Catalogues and 'Lives of the English Dramatick Poets' 209
- II Singleton Reprints 214
- Format and Price 218
- Used Books and Auction Sales 219
- Fractionalized Copyright and Risk Management 221
- III Playwright Collections 225
- IV Collected Editions of Shakespeare From 1709 231
- Shakespeare Singletons, 1594-1800 231
- Early Tonson Editions: Rowe (1709, 1714), Pope (1725), and Theobald (1733) 235
- The Tonson-Walker Shakespeare Price War 239
- Scholarly Editions of Shakespeare from Hanmer (1743-1744) to Malone (1790) 240
- V Thomas Johnson and Early Collections 245
- Thomas Johnson of the Hague 245
- Three Experimental Collections 248
- VI Specialty Collections 249
- Old Plays 250
- A Curiosity 252
- Annotated Collections 253
- Genre Collections 253
- VII New Directions: John Bell's Three Editions of Shakespeare, 1773-1774, 1775-1776, and 1785-1788 254
- Bell's 'Scenic' Shakespeare, 1773-1774 255
- Bell's 'Serial' Shakespeare, 1775-1776, and his 'Literary' Shakespeare, 1785-1788 259
- VIII General Drama Series: John Bell, his Predecessors, and Competitors 262
- Collections and their Impact on Canonicity 262
- Bell versus Lowndes and Others 265
- Some Figures on Cost, Wholesale Price, and Print Runs 269
- 6 Illustrations in Eighteenth-century English Playbooks 273
- I Brief Historical Overview 273
- II New Directions in Play Illustration, 1775-1784 280
- John Bell's Innovation and Responses to It 281
- The Production Process and Style 285
- The Several Early Portrait Series: Procedural Issues 289
- Life-Drawing 295
- Privileged Personnel 299
- Idealization and its Effect on Drawing from Life 310
- III Changes in Patterns of Illustration, 1785-1797 325
- Bell's 1785 'Literary' Shakespeare 325
- Adjustments to Procedure 329
- Competition 336
- The Second Iteration of Bell's British Theatre: Changed Circumstances 338
- Repertory Changes 338
- Variations in the New Series and Upheavals in Business 341
- Implications of the Changed Conditions 344
- Process 348
- IV Conclusion 356.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 425-451) and indexes.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.
- ISBN:
- 9780712357739
- 0712357734
- OCLC:
- 914163601
- Publisher Number:
- 99963924259
- Online:
- Contributor biographical information
- Publisher description
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