MANUSCRIPT VERSE COLLECTORS AND THE POLITICS OF ANTI-COURTLY LOVE POETRY

First edition, first printing. Publisher's original black cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, with a small crease to the head of the spine. The contents are clean throughout, and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the original dustwrapper, which is a touch creased to the extremities and a little marked to the rear panel.

'This book reappraises the work of early seventeenth-century collectors of English Renaissance poetry in manuscript. The verse miscellanies, or poetry anthologies, of these collectors have long attracted the attention of literary editors looking for texts by individual, major authors, and they have more recently interested historians for their poems on affairs of state, called verse libels. By contrast, this book investigates the relationships that the compiler of miscellanies established between such presumably literary and political texts. [...] Based on a thorough investigation of manuscript verse miscellanies, the book appeals to scholars and students of early modern English literature and history, Donne studies, manuscript studies, and the history of the book' (publisher's blurb).