Networking print in Shakespeare's England : influence, agency, and revolutionary change / Blaine Greteman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greteman, Blaine, author.

Series:

Stanford Text Technologies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social networks--History--England--17th century.

Social networks.

Book industries and trade--History--England--17th century.

Book industries and trade.

Early printed books--Social aspects--England--17th century.

Early printed books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 pages)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2021]

Summary:

In Networking Print in Shakespeare's England, Blaine Greteman uses new analytical tools to examine early English print networks and the systemic changes that reshaped early modern literature, thought, and politics. In early modern England, printed books were a technology that connected people—not only readers and writers, but an increasingly expansive community of printers, publishers, and booksellers—in new ways. By pairing the methods of network analysis with newly available digital archives, Greteman aims to change the way we usually talk about authorship, publication, and print. As Greteman reveals, network analysis of the nearly 500,000 books printed in England before 1800 makes it possible to speak once again of a "print revolution," identifying a sudden tipping point at which the early modern print network became a small world where information could spread in new and powerful ways. Along with providing new insights into canonical literary figures like Milton and Shakespeare, data analysis also uncovers the hidden histories of key figures in this transformation who have been virtually ignored. Both a primer on the power of network analysis and a critical intervention in early modern studies, the book is ultimately an extended meditation on agency and the complexity of action in context.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Note on Quotations

INTRODUCTION

1 Methods and Data

2 A Small New World: Fire, Infection, and Sudden Change in the English Print Network

3 Hubs in the Network: Nicholas Okes and the Making of Infectious Information

4 Radical Betweenness: Eleanor Davies and Mary Cary

5 Weak Ties and the Making of a Strong Poet: John Milton's Early Publishers

EPILOGUE: Future Directions in Networking the Past

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781503627994

1503627993

OCLC:

1259323032