The Making of Percy's "Reliques"

Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) is one of the founding texts of English literature, and 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 is the first monograph devoted to Percy's seminal work. In The Making of Percys Reliques, Nick Groom vividly reconstructs pioneering antiquarianism and its processes of collecting, transcribing, and collating. With meticulous scholarship, he unravels Percy's working methods, examining his correspondence, library, and papers - as well as his friendships with scholars like Samuel Johnson. This microbibliographical analysis takes literary history and critical theory in significant new directions. As Groom shows, the creation about historical sources and the origins of Englishness, and the practices of eighteenth-century editing were intertwined with themes as diverse as gardening, nightingales, forgery, and cannibalism.

ISBN 019818459X   Volumes 001 ISBN13 9780198184591 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 468 Publisher Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Imprint Oxford University Press   Series editor Carey, John, Carey, John, Carey, John Format Hardback   Series title Oxford English Monographs Publication date 09 Sep 1999   Height (mm) 216 Library of Congress PR1181.P56   Width (mm) 138 DEWEY 821.6   Spine width (mm) 21 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level Professional / Scholarly Pages 304

		Notes on the Text
		Abbreviations
1		Introduction		1
2		The Ballad and Literary Antiquarianism		19
3		Macpherson and Percy		61
4		The Genesis of the Reliques		106
5		1761: The Making of the Reliques		145
6		Printing the Reliques		193
7		Conclusion		236
App. I		First Transcriptions		247
App. II		A Collection of Old Ballads		250
App. III		Robin Hood's Garland		252
App. IV		The 'First Draft'		253
App. V		The Revised 'First Draft'		258
App. VI		The Two-Volume Reliques Draft ('Gothic Antiquities')		261
App. VII		The Index Draft		266
App. VIII		The Copy Draft		270
App. IX		The Cancelled Ballads		273
App. X		The Order of the First Edition (1765)		274
		Index		280

This is an important book, both in its specific area and as a contribution to continuing debates on the complex affinities between antiquarianism and its own materials Years Work in English Studies

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