Damaged Type and <i>Areopagitica</i>'s Clandestine Printers

Warren, Christopher N.; Wiliams,; Rijhwani,; G'Sell,

doi:10.5325/miltonstudies.62.1.0001

Cited by 3 publications

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“…19 Some of our earlier work using the historical Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool Ocular to inspect examples of a given letter, or "sort," had given us hope that we could supplement Malcolm's findings with typographical evidence. 20 We were able to confirm Malcolm's finding that Darby's shop used Roman fonts similar to the two fonts in the body text of Ornaments-the first in books like Toland's Life of Milton and Harrington's Oceana (F1) and the second in Calamy's Sermons and Nye's Historical Account (F2). Despite these similarities, however, it remained difficult to match any particular sort of type from Darby's output to any of the roughly 200 distinctive sorts we identified in the Ornaments edition.…”

Section: Toward John Richardsonsupporting

confidence: 62%

Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan with Computational Bibliography? New Angles on Printing Thomas Hobbes’ “Ornaments” Edition

Warren¹,

Wiscomb²,

Williams³

et al. 2021

Eighteenth-Century Studies

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Section: Toward John Richardsonsupporting

confidence: 62%

Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan with Computational Bibliography? New Angles on Printing Thomas Hobbes’ “Ornaments” Edition

Warren¹,

Wiscomb²,

Williams³

et al. 2021

Eighteenth-Century Studies

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Selden’s reply to Salmasius, an alternative title for thePro Populo Anglicano Defensio, and why Milton deserves to be strangled: rumour and opinion in the correspondence of Guy Patin

Vozar

2022

The Seventeenth Century

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Areopagitica and Eighteenth‐Century Press Freedom

Orr

2024

Milton Quarterly

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Areopagitica (1644) is now one of Milton's most famous prose works, excerpted at length in standard educational anthologies and widely taught and read (Greenblatt; Black). In the words of Barbara K. Lewalski, "As everyone knows, Milton's argument, couched in poetic imagery and high rhetoric, has become a cornerstone in the liberal defense of freedom of speech, press, and thought" (180). Scholars agree, however, that the text supports post-publication censorship, as does Milton's own position as a licenser himself. They have explained this contradiction by viewing Areopagitica as rhetorical rather than a complete statement of Milton's own views, distinguishing between Milton's philosophical positions and his practical application of ideas in the real world (Loewenstein 189;. But what everyone does not know, to turn Lewalski's phrase around, is how it came to have such a wide application in contrast to its narrower message. Areopagitica was responding to a specific controversy and it did not initially have this larger impact (Norbrook).A closer look at Areopagitica's afterlife in the eighteenth century as booksellers appropriated it for their own ends shows that its transformation from a topical political tract to a broad statement on free speech was neither immediate nor accidental. It was instead a deliberate strategy by a group of eighteenth-century booksellers intent on protecting not the intellectual work of authors in the abstract, but their own interests. They transformed it from a topical tract about one political context to a topical tract relevant to a different political context by adding new paratexts, and in the process modeled how it could be applied to debates about free speech in other contexts. Areopagitica thereafter had ongoing relevance to the debate over press freedom that gained urgency throughout the eighteenth century. The Licensing Act and other political and legal developments of the 1730s instigated a change in the way that Milton was viewed in England, leading to an emphasis on his poetry and a view of him as a writer of literature for entertainment more than a political or topical writer. The decade saw new editions of his works, an adaptation of A Maske for performance, and musical settings by Handel for Samson Agonistes, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso adapted for performance (Martin 124; Greteman; Smith). The booksellers who republished Areopagitica took advantage of Milton's rising poetic reputation to recast his political writing for a new context. The importance of Areopagitica today is a product of eighteenth-century interest in the rights of the liberal subject that would have been completely alien to Milton in his pre-Lockeian world.

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Damaged Type and Areopagitica's Clandestine Printers

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan with Computational Bibliography? New Angles on Printing Thomas Hobbes’ “Ornaments” Edition

Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan with Computational Bibliography? New Angles on Printing Thomas Hobbes’ “Ornaments” Edition

Selden’s reply to Salmasius, an alternative title for thePro Populo Anglicano Defensio, and why Milton deserves to be strangled: rumour and opinion in the correspondence of Guy Patin

Areopagitica and Eighteenth‐Century Press Freedom

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