Department of English

         We will focus on the printing, reprinting, and reception of selected canonical Early Modern texts, including books by Shakespeare, Richardson, Montaigne, Cervantes, and Castiglione (the latter three available in early English translations). The topics that we will consider will include: the nature of authorship; the uses of sources and commonplace books; licensing and censorship; and the remaking of texts in the reprinting of them.

         We will draw wherever possible on the exceptional collections in Penn’s Special Collections and in other Philadelphia Libraries.