Abstract

This essay explores an artifact at the Newberry Library Chicago; cataloged as a copy of Thomas Becon's Pomaunder of Prayer (c.1560), this artifact is in fact a number of texts bound together for the personal use of an eighteenth-century owner, one John Buck. The anthologized texts are briefly examined, and an attempt made to sketch a preliminary portrait of John Buck based on his choice in devotional material and his own social context. This essay concludes that Buck's appropriation of early modern Protestant propoganda into his own eighteenth century Anglican identity provides a unique and helpful window into the early development of "polite religion" in England, which would come to define the Romantic period.

Highlights

  • It is nothing new to suggest that textual studies goes beyond examining a work within its original historical context in an attempt to uncover an elusive “originary” meaning or an “authoritative” interpretation of the text

  • While there are overwhelming opportunities to consider these dynamics in modern anthologies, edited and packaged with specific purposes, it is rare to examine an artifact which represents an organic and highly personal process of anthologization and the changes in meaning which occur during that process

  • This paper considers the original historical moments of the texts contained within “John Buck’s Book”, and considers the purposes they may have served in their deliberate collection into a private piece of eighteenth-century devotional literature

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Summary

Introduction

It is nothing new to suggest that textual studies goes beyond examining a work within its original historical context in an attempt to uncover an elusive “originary” meaning or an “authoritative” interpretation of the text. Catalogued as a copy of Thomas Becon’s Pomaunder of Prayer (c.1560), Case C 696.083 is, a large private devotional book comprised of the Becon text, three Pseudo-Augustinian texts produced by Thomas Rogers and printed in 1634 and 1635, and the manuscript notes of an eighteenth-century owner, as the first such note informs us: “Iohn Buck.

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