Cutting and authorship in early modern England

Authors

  • Adam Smyth Oxford University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v2i2.790

Keywords:

authorship, cutting and pasting, Early Modern print culture, Little Gidding, remix

Abstract

This article considers the cultural practice of cutting up texts in early modern England. The article provides a taxonomy of evidence for this practice, in part based on the Anglican community of Little Gidding in the 1630s, where members of the group bought printed gospels and cut them up to reorder, and harmonise, the story of Christ's life. The article then considers the implications of this practice of cutting, including for how we think about authorship.

Author Biography

Adam Smyth, Oxford University

Adam Smyth teaches English at Oxford University, where he is the A.C. Bradley-J.C. Maxwell Tutorial Fellow at Balliol College, and University Lecturer in the History of the Book. He is the author of, among other things, Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and the co-editor of Book Destruction in the West, from the Medieval to the Contemporary (Palgrave, forthcoming in 2014). He writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, and co-hosts the literary podcast litbits.co.uk.

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Published

2013-09-20

How to Cite

Smyth, A. (2013). Cutting and authorship in early modern England. uthorship, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v2i2.790

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2013)

Section

Special Topic: Remix

License

Authorship allows authors to hold both the copyright and the publishing rights over their work without restrictions. However, a mention of their first publication in Authorship will be highly appreciated.