A Bibliographical And Critical Account Of The Rarest Books In The English Language - Softcover

J. Payne Collier

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0461722992 ISBN 13: 9780461722994

Publisher: HardPress, 2021

Synopsis

A Bibliographical And Critical Account Of The Rarest Books In The English Language by J. Payne Collier provides a concise, scholarly note on the obscure 1594 poetry collection Zepheria and uses it to explore patterns of imitation and attribution in late 16th-century English printing. The note centers on Zepheria’s place in the period’s print culture, its limited merit, and its lack of a dedication, while highlighting editorial issues such as errata and misreadings that complicate transmission. It gives detailed attention to B. Griffin’s Fidessa (1596), arguing that Griffin’s borrowing from Shakespeare, Gascoigne, and Samuel Daniel’s Delia represents a conspicuous and systematic act of plagiarism, and contrasts this with more subtle forms of imitation found in other authors. The discussion situates these practices within a broader ecosystem of anonymous or contested attributions, and underscores how richly the era’s bibliographic landscape is interwoven with authors, printers, and editors. The accompanying expansive index maps the era’s literary network, reinforcing the metadata emphasis on authorship, edition history, and textual transmission as central to cataloging this material.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0461722992
• ISBN 13: 9780461722994
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 354