The Culture of Collected Editions by Andrew Nash The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method by Joseph A. Dane (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.2, 2005 475 associations evoked by that novel's geography, the Queensberry trial might have collapsed rather more quickly than it did. Broadly speaking, Cook argues for what he calls a relationship of 'controlled plu? rality' between London and homosexual identity,and he concentrates primarily upon the cultural mapping ofthe urban homosexual space and its impact upon homosexual identity at both the individual and group level. Although Cook is rightly careful to avoid imposing simplistic and schematic ideas on this intricate discursive framework, sometimes his emphasis on plurality seems to come at the expense of articulating the mechanism of control, occasionally leading him to some slightly unsatisfying conclu? sions; the end of the book in particular strikes a peculiarly resigned note, implying that because the connection between homosexuality and the city is so multifarious and complex we can do nothing but mark it. This, however, does little to undermine the many fascinating insights into precisely this connection that are expressed more authoritatively in the text. Cook's eye forhistorical detail makes the study an invalu? able compendium of information on subjects as diverse as the emergent sexology of Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis which prioritized environment as the key factor in sexual orientation, homosexual pornography that engaged with urban class division, 'decadent' literature that sought to redefine the public spaces of the city as private spheres of aesthetic vision, and a legislature growing ever more imprecise in defining the boundaries of acceptable homosexual behaviour. In fact, one of the highlights of the book is the clear articulation of an often rather cloudy subject, the impact upon homosexual life by legislation between the infamous Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and the later, less infamous but more punitive measures which actually resulted in the outlawing of certain types of non-sexual behaviour. Later legal moves against solicitingonly required the suspicion of intention, which, as Cook points out, effectivelymade a sly wink potentially illegal. When Cook argues that there was no great deluge of homosexuals leaving England for the Continent in the wake of Wilde's conviction (on the contrary, he gives the impression that they were more probably loitering in railway stations), he not only provides an array of crime statistics, but is careful to point out the way specific crimes were collated, gives the details in appendices, and notes the possible influence of a change in police commissioner. It is a prime example of the level of care Cook takes throughout when reaching across an impressive range of disciplines, and this is what makes his study an essential sourcebook forany student of the homosexual culture of this period, whether studying the arts, the sciences, or politics. Linacre College, Oxford Matthew Bradley The Culture ofCollected Editions. Ed. by Andrew Nash. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. xii + 274pp. ?50. ISBN 1-4039-0266-6. The Myth ofPrint Culture: Essays onEvidence, Textuality,and Bibliographical Method. By Joseph A. Dane. Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press. 2003. viii + 242pp. $60; ?40. ISBN 0-8020-8775-2. No longer the preserve of librarians and bibliographers, the 'history of the book' has become a discipline of its own, complete with degree programmes, journals, monographic series, and conferences. Over the past two decades, scholars have recognized that literary meaning may inhere not just in what an author wrote but in the media of authorial dissemination: the physical shape of the book, the typeface on the page, the economics of the book trade, the habits of readers. Two recent books about book history bear eloquent and provocative witness to the vivacity of this discipline. The Culture of Collected Editions collects a set of papers, originally delivered at a 476 Reviews conference at the Institute of English Studies, all of which focus on some aspect of authorial edition. The emergence of the collected works of a vernacular author in the early sixteenth century (firstwith Chaucer) helped shape relationships among literary biography, textual criticism, officialpatronage, and commercial printing. The study of such volumes, offeredhere in chronological sequence beginning with Ben Jonson, leads us to reconsider, as Andrew Nash puts it, 'the construction of authorship, the history of reputation, and the formation of the...