Reading Printed Poetry in Early Modern England

Abstract

This chapter traces poetry’s reach in early modern England by introducing the imagined reading public and the documented audience for printed poetry books. It surveys poets’ and publishers’ speculations about the reading public for early modern poetry and their efforts to accommodate readers as described in paratexts, treatises on vernacular poetics, and metapoetic works. Quantitative studies of the print publication of poetry understate its cultural importance; while some genres moved to print or stayed in manuscript, poetry continued to be circulated in both manuscript and print. Printed poetry books reached audiences who did not leave traces in the books they read, as well as readers whom we can identify using evidence of book ownership in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Authors, printers, and publishers involved in the publication of poetry developed a set of conventions to appeal to new readers, even as the cultural status of poetry remained in flux.