Miscellany
A miscellany is a collection of various pieces of writing by different authors. Meaning a mixture, medley, or assortment, a miscellany can include pieces on many subjects and in a variety of different forms. In contrast to anthologies, whose aim is to give a selective and canonical view of literature, miscellanies were produced for the entertainment of a contemporary audience and so instead emphasise collectiveness and popularity. Laura Mandell and Rita Raley state:
Manuscript miscellanies are important in the Middle Ages, and are the sources for most surviving shorter medieval vernacular poetry. Medieval miscellanies often include completely different types of text, mixing poetry with legal documents, recipes, music, medical and devotional literature and other types of text, and in medieval contexts a mixture of types of text is often taken as a necessary condition for describing a manuscript as a miscellany. They may have been written as a collection, or represent manuscripts of different origins that were later bound together for convenience. In the early modern period miscellanies remained significant in a more restricted literary context, both in manuscript and printed forms, mainly as a vehicle for collections of shorter pieces of poetry, but also other works. Their numbers increased until their peak of importance in the 18th century, when [|over 1000] English poetry miscellanies were published, before the [|rise of anthologies] in the early 19th century. The printed miscellany gradually morphed into the format of the regularly published magazine, and many early magazines used the word in their titles.
Manuscript and printed miscellanies before the 18th century
The broadest distinction is between manuscript and printed miscellanies. Manuscript miscellanies were carefully compiled by hand, but also circulated, consumed, and sometimes added to in this organic state – they were a prominent feature of 16th and early 17th century literary culture. Printed miscellanies, which evolved in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were compiled by editors and published by booksellers to make a profit. While manuscript miscellanies were produced by a small coterie of writers, and so were constructed around their own personal tastes, printed miscellanies were increasingly aimed towards a popular audience, and bear the marks of commercially driven, money making, opportunistic endeavours.Multi-authored collections are known to exist in many forms – such as newspapers, magazines, or journals – and the act of commonplacing, of transcribing useful extracts and quotations from multiple sources is also well recorded. However, the formal production of literary miscellanies came into its established form in the 16th and 17th centuries, and reached a highpoint in the 18th century. Although literary miscellanies would often contain critical essays and extracts of prose or drama, their main focus was popular verse, often including songs. At this time poetry was still a dominant literary form, for both low and high literature, and its variety and accessibility further suited it to miscellaneous publication.
Medieval miscellanies
Most medieval miscellanies include some religious texts, and many consist of nothing else. A few examples are given here to illustrate the range of material typically found. The Theological miscellany was made in late 8th century Italy with 202 folios of patristic writings in Latin. The 9th-century Irish Book of Armagh is also mostly in Latin but includes some of the earliest surviving Old Irish writing, as well as several texts on Saint Patrick, significant sections of the New Testament, and a 4th-century saint's Life. The Nowell Codex is an Old English manuscript of about 1000 to 1010. It is famous for the only text of Beowulf but also includes a life of Saint Christopher, Wonders of the East, a translation of a Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and the poem Judith based on the Old Testament Book of Judith. It is one of the four Old English Poetic Codices from which the bulk of surviving Old English poetry comes, all of which can be classed as miscellanies.The Lacnunga is a 10th or 11th century miscellany in Old English, Latin and Old Irish, with health-related texts taking a wide range of approaches, from herbal medicine and other medical procedures, to prayers and charms. The lavishly illuminated late 13th century North French Hebrew Miscellany contains mostly biblical and liturgical texts, but also legal material, over 200 poems, and calendars. The large 9th-century Chinese text Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang, contains various Chinese and foreign legends and hearsay, reports on natural phenomena, short anecdotes, and tales of the wondrous and mundane, as well as notes on such topics as medicinal herbs and tattoos. The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608, an oversized illustrated manuscript of 594 pages, depicts a wide range of subjects including herbal cures, biblical stories, a list of the mayors of London, proverbs, calendars, and embroidery patterns.
Verse miscellanies
Verse miscellanies are collections of poems or poetic extracts that vary in authorship, genre, and subject matter. The earlier tradition of manuscript verse continued to be produced in the 16th century and onwards, and many of these early examples are preserved in national, state, and university libraries, as well as in private collections. The Devonshire Manuscript is a verse miscellany that was produced in the 1530s and early 1540s, and contains a range of works, from original pieces and fragments to translations and medieval verse. Compiled by three eminent women, it is one of the first examples of men and women collaborating on a literary work.Also prominent is the Arundel Harington manuscript, containing the writings of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Queen Elizabeth, and Sir Philip Sidney. Into the 17th century, the two Dalhousie Manuscripts are also of literary significance, as they contain the largest sustained contemporary collection of John Donne’s verse. Although fewer medieval verse miscellanies have been preserved, the Auchinleck Manuscript survives as a good example: it was produced in London in the 1330s and offers a rare snapshot of pre-Chaucerian Middle English poetry. However, most surviving manuscript verse miscellanies are from the 17th century:
Printed verse miscellanies arose in the latter half of the 16th century, during the reign of Elizabeth I. One of the most influential English Renaissance verse miscellanies was Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes, now better known as Tottel's Miscellany. First printed in 1557, it ran into nine further editions before 1587; it was not then printed again until the 18th century. Although few new miscellanies emerged during the insurrectionary years of James I and Charles I, there was a resurgence of interest during the Restoration period and 18th century, and the vast majority of printed verse miscellanies originate from this latter period.
The poetry in these miscellanies varied widely in genre, form, and subject, and would frequently include: love lyrics, pastorals, odes, ballads, songs, sonnets, satires, hymns, fables, panegyrics, parodies, epistles, elegies, epitaphs, and epigrams, as well as translations into English and prologues and epilogues from plays. The practice of attributing poems in miscellanies was equally varied: sometimes editors would carefully identify authors, but most often the miscellaneous form would allow them to disregard conventions of authorship. Often authors were indicated by a set of initials, a partial name, or by reference to a previous poem "by the same hand"; equally often there were anonymous or pseudonymous attributions, as well as misattributions to other authors – or even made-up or deceased persons. Within a miscellany, editors and booksellers would often exercise considerable freedom in reproducing, altering, and extracting texts. Due to early copyright laws, lesser-known authors would regularly play no part in the printing process, receive no remuneration or royalties, and their works could be freely redistributed once in the public domain.
Development in the 18th century
Throughout the 18th century, the miscellany was the customary mode through which popular verse and occasional poetry would be printed, circulated, and consumed. Michael F. Suarez, one of the leading authorities on miscellanies, states:Including songbooks, the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature lists almost 5000 verse miscellanies which were printed between 1701 and 1800. Due to the sheer number and variety of miscellanies printed in the 18th century, there are few generalizations that can be made about them. From the polite to the partly obscene the central purpose behind nearly all printed verse miscellanies was the reader’s entertainment. However, they were also marketed with practical purposes in mind: as educative moral guides, as repositories of useful information, as elocutionary aids, and as guides for poetical composition.