Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture)

This collection is the first to historicise the term ephemera and its meanings for early modern England and considers its relationship to time, matter, and place. It asks: how do we conceive of ephemera in a period before it was routinely employed (from the eighteenth century) to describe ostensibly disposable print? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—when objects and texts were rapidly proliferating—the term began to acquire its modern association with transitoriness. But contributors to this volume show how ephemera was also integrally related to wider social and cultural ecosystems. Chapters explore those ecosystems and think about the papers and artefacts that shaped homes, streets, and cities or towns and their attendant preservation, loss, or transformation. The studies here therefore look beyond static records to think about moments of process and transmutation and accordingly get closer to early modern experiences, identities, and practices. This collection is the first to historicise the term ephemera and its meanings for early modern England and considers its relationship to time, matter and place. It asks: how do we conceive of ephemera in a period before it was routinely employed (from the eighteenth century) to describe ostensibly disposable print? MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgements 12 Biographies 14 Introduction/Spawning 18 PART I: Concepts/Emerging 36 1 Expired Time: Archiving Waste Manuscripts 38 2 What Do Texts and Insects Have in Common? Or, Ephemerality before Ephemera 42 3 Time’s Flies: Ephemerality in the Early Modern Insect World 61 4 What Is an ‘Ephemeral Archive’? Stratford-upon-Avon, 1550–1650: A Case Study 82 5 Paper and Elite Ephemerality 100 PART II: Matter/Metamorphosing 120 6 Recipes and Paper Knowledge 122 7 More Lasting than Bronze: Statues, Writing, and the Materials of Ephemera in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall 128 8 Uncovering Ephemeral Practice: Itineraries of Black Ink and the Experiments of Thomas Davis 145 9 Things That Last: Ephemerality and Endurance in Early Modern England 165 PART III: Environments/Buzzing 184 10 A Toy Coach from London 186 11 Maritime Ephemera in Walter Mountfort’s The Launching of the Mary 190 12 Playing Apples and the Playhouse Archive 208 13 Extensive Ephemera: Perfumer’s Trade Cards in Eighteenth-Century England 227 Index 246 Ephemeral Archive,Black Ink,Endurance,Draft Parties,Trifles,Transitory,Contrivance,Ephemerology