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Book Cover for: Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare: Stationers Shaping a Genre, Amy Lidster

Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare: Stationers Shaping a Genre

Amy Lidster

During the early modern period, the publication process decisively shaped the history play and its reception. Bringing together the methodologies of genre criticism and book history, this study argues that stationers have - through acts of selection and presentation - constructed some remarkably influential expectations and ideas surrounding genre. Amy Lidster boldly challenges the uncritical use of Shakespeare's Folio as a touchstone for the history play, exposing the harmful ways in which this has solidified its parameters as a genre exclusively interested in the lives of English kings. Reframing the Folio as a single example of participation in genre-making, this book illuminates the exciting and diverse range of historical pasts that were available to readers and audiences in the early modern period. Lidster invites us to reappraise the connection between plays on stage and in print, and to reposition playbooks within the historical culture and geopolitics of the book trade.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • Publish Date: Mar 17th, 2022
  • Pages: 280
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.69in - 1.25lb
  • EAN: 9781316517253
  • Categories: English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

About the Author

Lidster, Amy: - Amy Lidster is a Departmental Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Jesus College, University of Oxford. She is co-editor of Shakespeare at War: A Material History (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and her work has appeared widely in books and journals, including Old St Paul's and Culture (2021), Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Studies, and Renaissance Drama.