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  • Monday, October 28, 2024 - 5:15pm to 7:15pm

Class of 1978 Pavilion, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center


We welcome Alan B. Farmer (Ohio State University), for a talk titled: “Lost Literature in the Early Modern English Book Trade, 1557–1640: Poetry, Plays, and Prose Fiction.” Professor Farmer writes: 

Scholars have long recognized the reality of lost books in early modern England, in particular works that no longer survive in even a single printed copy. This talk will focus on the distinct methodological challenges that come with attempting to identify lost editions in various print genres because, it turns out, different types of literature have become lost at different rates. I will address the larger significance of these lost books for our understanding of the workings of the early modern English book trade, the literary history of Renaissance England, and, more generally, the cultural history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

Alan B. Farmer is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University. He is the co-creator, with Zachary Lesser, of DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks, published this September in a revised edition. He publishes most often on book history, widow stationers, Shakespeare in print, and Renaissance English drama. This talk comes out of his current project on lost books in the early modern English book trade.