Our January display in the library showcases examples of 17th and 18th century verse miscellanies from our rare books room.
Verse miscellanies are characterised by the collection of poetry by more than one author, in a single volume or a series, sometimes mixing different verse forms and subjects. Collections ranged from the elegant to the vulgar, the irreverent to the serious. Sometimes they aimed for all of these qualities at once, as seen in the title page of The Gentleman’s Miscellany (1730), advertising itself to be ‘Serious, Jocose, Satyrical, Humorous, and Diverting’ [2r]. The page displayed here contains a mocking dedication to Alexander Pope by the pseudonymous ‘Sir Butterfly Maggot’.
Printed miscellanies began to emerge in the Elizabethan period, the most famous being Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonnettes (1557), known as Tottel’s Miscellany. Before this point, collections of poetry, prose and religious writing were compiled in manuscript. The printed miscellany format reached a peak of popularity in the late 17th and 18th century.
The nature of miscellany production can give us a sense of the verse readers enjoyed on two levels: compilers may have selected according to their own taste, but also used their knowledge of popular taste for a commercial purpose.
Michael F. Suarez writes that “[i]n the vast majority of cases, poetical miscellanies were created as moneymaking endeavours, although most of their prefaces or advertisements claim that their compilation provides a valuable service to literature by preserving verses which otherwise might well have perished.” (Suarez, p.218)
Miscellanies did not always include well-known poets, indeed some explicitly championed little known writers or anonymous works. One example is An Asylum for Fugitive Pieces (1785), which in its advertisement refers to itself as ‘The New Foundling Hospital for Wit’. This reference to Thomas Coram’s orphanage suggests the preservation of forgotten poems as a charitable undertaking and invites readers to enjoy poetry divorced from the context of its original authorship and publication.
Although some miscellanies seem random in their selection of material, others have a focussed purpose, whether to entertain the reader, or to educate, inform or satirise.
Take the Collected Poems on Affairs of State (1689), a series containing political poems by Andrew Marvell and other writers such as John Dryden, including heroic verses on ‘The Death of the late usurper Oliver Cromwell’ and irreverent satires on the advisors and mistresses of King Charles II. The publication collects politically subversive material, some too sensitive to have been published before Marvell’s death in 1678 and the Revolution of 1688. The overall tone is critical of court corruption, and demonstrates a current of anti-Catholicism in the 1660s and 70s.
The page displayed here demonstrates an interesting example of reader engagement with the text; a previous owner has made corrections and filled in omitted names.
A final category of miscellany includes those unapologetically light-hearted publications intended for popular entertainment. A prime example is The Oxford Sausage: Or, Select Poetical Pieces, Written by the most Celebrated Wits of the University of Oxford (1764).
The preface states: ‘Our principal Aim, has been to collect Poems of Humour and Burlesque’, inviting those readers ‘grown thin, by too much Study, Fasting, and low Spirits…to partake of this cheap, delicious, and salutary, Morsel’ [A2v]-A3[r]. It also plays on the editor’s anonymity, challenging readers to find out his name.
Some of the poems refer to local characters, such as ‘Benjamin Tyrell, Cook, in the High Street, Oxford’ [A4r], perhaps indicating a select intended readership. You can see here the first in a series of poems dedicated to Tyrell’s apparently famous mutton pies, accompanied by a woodcut of the man himself at work.
For more miscellanies we recommend the Digital Miscellanies Index: a database with digitised copies of over 1500 miscellanies published in the 18th century
Bibliography/ Further Reading:
Batt, Jennifer. ‘Eighteenth-Century Verse Miscellanies’, Literature Compass, Vol 9 Issue 6, 2012.
Smyth, Adam. ‘‘Profit and Delight’’: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.
Suarez, Michael F. ‘The Production and Consumption of the Eighteenth-Century Poetic Miscellany’, in Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England. Ed. Isabel Rivers. London: Leicester University Press, 2001. pp.217-251
This exhibition was been curated by Mary Atkinson – EFL Graduate Trainee 2015-16