Abstract
ABSTRACT: This article explores the place that almanacs held in early modern English culture, offering evidence of how they shaped practices of time keeping and history writing. During a period in which the calendar was a site of religious discord and political debate, did the printed time of the almanac act as a regularizing force? How was history writing used to shape local and national identity in both England and New England colonies? Did the ephemeral nature of the almanac make time less valuable? Drawing on evidence from the previously unstudied annotated almanacs in the Huntington Library and the Beinecke Library, this article attends to the ways in which the time of the almanac was personalized and multitemporal. By focusing on traces of book use, the article examines the symbiotic relationship between readers and their books, arguing that the materiality of texts both reveals and shapes patterns of thought.
Published Version
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