Books in the Material Texts series

This book explores actors' systems of intellectual property in early modern England. Focusing on Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, and other plays, James Marino demonstrates how Shakespeare's company asserted ownership of its plays through intense ongoing revision and through insistent attribution to Shakespeare.

Knowing Books examines a variety of eighteenth-century sources that deploy language to emphasize their status as physical objects and their circulation as commodities. In Lupton's account, these texts use this device to enhance their appeal as entertaining objects, making them part of an ongoing tradition of self-conscious media.

"Taylor contributes new insights to material philology and makes a brilliant demonstration of its concerns."-Stephen Nichols, The Johns Hopkins University

In 1823 Sir Henry Bunbury discovered an early edition of Hamlet that radically differs from the known and celebrated version of the play. Zachary Lesser examines how this improbable discovery forced readers to reexamine accepted truths about Shakespeare as an author and the nature of Shakespeare's texts.

Examines how speech, visual images, and written texts all interact as manifestations of the human desire to know and remember. This book seeks to address the reductive opposition both between written and oral texts and between script and print in the Early Modern period.