Edmund Spenser and the Eighteenth-Century Book

Hazel Wilkinson is a Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham, where she lectures on eighteenth-century literature. She has published articles and book chapters on subjects including eighteenth-century literature, typography, and the history of the book trade, and is currently an editor on The Oxford Edition of the Writings of Alexander Pope (forthcoming). Wilkinson has also created a database of eighteenth-century printers' ornaments in partnership with the University of Cambridge Library.

• List of abbreviations; List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction. 'The Wits have sent for the Book': (non-)reading, and Spenserian books before 1700; 1. Spenser the Whig: John Hughes's Clubbable Edition, 1715; 2. Miscellaneous Spenser: verse miscellanies and miscellaneous culture, 1716–50; 3. Spenser illustrated: Thomas Birch's 1751 Edition; 4. Spenser annotated: two scholarly editions, 1758–9; 5. Spenser and the public domain: the Scottish Publishers' series, 1778–95; Appendix A: checklist of the eighteenth-century editions of Edmund Spenser; List of works cited; Index.

'A crucial reminder that literary critics and historians alike have much to learn from the study of bibliography and the history of the book when done, as it is here, with evident care, admirable precision, and infectious enthusiasm for its subject.' N. K. Sugimura, The Library