In the early years of the twentieth century, the wide dissemination in Ireland of British popular literature (including penny dreadfuls, educational books, newspapers, and magazines) prompted an intensification of activities by Irish writers keen to preserve and support a distinct Irish literary tradition. Such activities ranged from W. B. Yeats’s efforts to construct a national canon centred on the folklore of an ancient Ireland predating English colonisation, to the nationalist vision of a new Gaelic Irish culture, predicated on Catholicism and the Irish language, promoted by figures such as D. P. Moran. There was of course much discussion, in this period, about how exactly Irish literature could define itself against British literature. Yet at the same time, even among many separatists, there was a very strong sense of attachment to English literary culture. This chapter describes the complex patterns of influence and resistance that shaped both British and Irish literature between 1900 and 1920 by examining some of the popular, periodical, pedagogical, and literary texts that were central to the traffic in ideas back and forth across the Irish sea.

Introduction

I open this consideration of nostalgia and political theory with two passages from the history of political thought, and one from contemporary American politics. First, from Livy's History of Rome:

Livy thus introduces and frames his monumental work by contrasting a virtuous past with a degenerate present ‘in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies’.

Second – continuing with the theme of Livy – from Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy:

Here, Machiavelli distinguishes between two phenomena that ‘men … celebrate’: ‘the ancient times’, or ‘that age which has been recalled to their memory by known writers’ (in other words, times of which they can have no direct knowledge, but must rely on history books), and a past that they have, at least purportedly, experienced first hand; in other words, that ‘(being now old) they remember having seen in their youth’.

Third, to come closer to the present day, the 45th President of the United States: ‘When we were all younger – many of you are my age and many of you are younger – but when we were all younger we didn't lose so much, right? We don't win anymore. As a country, we don't win’ (Donald Trump, quoted in Johnson and Del Real 2016).

Tracks the history of Shakespeare publishing in the US in the period running through to the end of the nineteenth century. Most of the earliest editions were derivative and it is noted that genuinely new advances in editorial scholarship were hampered by the lack of availability of primary texts in America in the earliest decades of Shakespeare publishing there. As access to early editions improved, a distinctively American strand of Shakespeare editing emerged. The careers of notable American editors are detailed, with a particular focus on Henry Norman Hudson, William J. Rolfe, Richard Grant White and Horace Howard Furness. Furness's inauguration of a variorum series, continued by his son, and later taken up by the Modern Language Association, is registered as being of signal importance. The pioneering work of Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke is also discussed. By the early twentieth century a significant transfer of early Shakespeare editions from UK collections to US research libraries meant that America was finally in a position to lead the way in terms of Shakespeare editorial scholarship.

This chapter charts the second phase of the Tonson Shakespeare editions, examining texts produced from the mid eighteenth century onwards. The editorial work of Samuel Johnson is explored, with particular attention being paid to his registering of the principle that those texts published closest to an author's own time have a greater authority than later editions. The editorial work of those who inherited Johnson's edition – George Steevens and Isaac Reed – is examined. Edward Capell and Edmond Malone are presented as exemplary figures, whose work anticipated much editorial practice in the modern era, though it is noted that the logistical complexity of Capell's edition (and his obscure prose style) meant that his achievements were not fully appreciated until a later period. Malone's edition is seen as offering a kind of capstone to the editorial achievements of the eighteenth century and setting compass points for Shakespeare editing in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Begins by examining the career of the publisher Thomas Pavier in order to provide context for a puzzling collection of texts that he issued in 1619. The collection would seem to be the first attempt to offer the public a 'selected works' of Shakespeare, though, in fact, some of the plays included have only a tenuous connection to the playwright. The logistics of the project are considered, as well as the various arguments for why it appears to have been undertaken in a rather clandestine fashion. The chapter then moves on to consider the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, the 'First Folio', published in 1623. The volume is viewed within the context of the overarching career of Edward Blount, its primary investor. The progression of the volume through the printshop of William and Isaac Jaggard is tracked, drawing on the seminal work of Charlton Hinman, who made extensive use of the collection of First Folios established by Emily and Henry Clay Folger. The subsequent set of folio editions issued between 1632 and 1700 is also discussed.

The domination of the Shakespeare publishing field by the Tonson cartel came under challenge from various quarters over the course of the eighteenth century. This chapter charts the efforts of a number of English publishers to break the cartel's monopoly. The legal and regulatory background is traced and the various challenges across the century are registered, including initiatives launched by Thomas Johnson, Robert Walker, Thomas Cotes and John Bell. Attention is paid to the first English edition of Shakespeare published outside London: Thomas Hanmer's text, issued in conjunction with the university press at Oxford. The chapter concludes with a consideration of John Stockdale's editions which, in one configuration, offered the first single-volume text to have appeared since the end of the seventeenth century.

The various strands of Shakespeare scholarly publishing are explored in this chapter. The emergence of techniques for producing increasingly accurate facsimiles of early modern editions led to the appearance of multiple facsimile editions of the First Folio and of the early quartos. But the period was also marked by significant controversy, most particularly in the instance of John Payne Collier's claim to have uncovered an edition of the 1632 second folio with annotations in the hand of a seventeenth-century theatre functionary. The eventual debunking of Collier's claims destroyed his reputation. Of key importance in the period was the production of the Cambridge Shakespeare, under the primary editorship of William Aldis Wright. This was the first edition produced by university scholars and it offered the definitive scholarly text of its era (in addition to being spun off, commercially, into the Globe Shakespeare). The chapter closes by considering the launch of the Arden Shakespeare, initially under the general editorship of Edward Dowden. The Arden set the model for academic editions produced by a range of editors under the stewardship of a general editor; it has survived through a number of iterations over the course of more than a century.