The Making of Percy's Reliques

Bibliographic Data

ID8101520
AuthorsNick Groom (0000-0002-5405-7796, corresponding author)
Year1999
Pages290
Publication date1999-09-09
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueThe making of Percy's Reliques (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184591.001.0001
OpenAlexW2029499358
Open LibraryOL6897702M
ISBN9780198184591
LanguageEN
Citations received27

Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) is one of the founding texts of English literature, an epoch-making collection of historical and lyrical ballads that defined the canon of popular poetry. It dramatically influenced Romanticism and the writing of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Walter Scott, and even Lewis Carroll. This book is devoted to Percy's seminal work. The book reconstructs pioneering antiquarianism and its processes of collecting, transcribing, and collating. It unravels Percy's working methods, examining his correspondence, library, and papers, as well as his friendships with scholars like Samuel Johnson. This micro-bibliographical analysis takes literary history and critical theory in significant new directions. As the book shows, the creation of historical sources and the origins of Englishness, and the practices of 18th-century editing were intertwined with themes as diverse as gardening, nightingales, forgery, and cannibalism

Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton · History · Irish and British Studies · Joseph Conrad and Literature · 18th century · 1916-1990 · 20th century · American fiction · American fiction, history and criticism · Appreciation · Ballads · Ballads, English · Ballads, Scots · biography · Criticism, Textual · England · English Ballads · English poetry · Great britain · History and criticism · Influence · James Macpherson (1736-1796) · Literary historians · Literature publishing · Percy, walker · Publishing · Scotland · Scots Ballads · Scottish authors · Scottish poetry · Textual Criticism · Thomas Percy (1729-1811)

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