Speaking of Institutions and Canonicity, Don't Forget the Publishers

In February, Professor Terry asked a conditional question: “If canons are by definition institutional, that is, if they can exist only in a practical alliance with a body or institution committed to their dissemination, can we recognize such bodies in the universities and academies of eighteenth-century Britain?” He answered in the negative, ultimately rejecting John Guillory’s view of the canon as “a discursive instrument of transmission situated historically within a specific institution of reproduction: the school.” Students, Terry objected, “comprise something less than the reading public at large,” and consequently “the ability of any institutional syllabus to dictate a version of the canon to a wider public was negligible.” Having rejected the consequent of his conditional question, however, he seems to have dismissed the antecedent as well. That is, in concluding, “No, we cannot recognize such bodies in the university,” he disregarded other bodies or institutions that might be committed to disseminating canons. Granted, Terry covered a lot of ground in a fairly limited space, but “due regard to the social structures through which literary works are created and disseminated” might have prompted him to survey the terrain more finely.

With respect to the “reading public at large” it is well to remember the following publications:

• The English Poets, 49 vols. (Glasgow: R. & A. Foulis, 1765–76)

• The British Poets, 44 vols. (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid & W. Creech, & J. Balfour, 1773–76)

• A Collection of the English Poets, 20 vols. (Aberdeen: J. Boyle, 1776–77)

• Bell’s Edition The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill, 109 vols. (Edinburgh: Apollo Press, by the Martins, 1776–82)

• The Works of the English Poets, 68 vols. (London: C. Bathurst et al., 1779–81)

• The Poetical Magazine: or, Parnassian Library, 15 vols. (London: J. Wenman, 1780–81 [under title of Wenman’s Cheap Editions, eventually 25 vols. through 1791/92])

• The Scotish Poets, 5 vols. (Perth: R. Morison & Son, 1786–89)

• The Works of the English Poets, 75 vols. (London: J. Buckland et al., 1790)

• A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, ed. Robert Anderson, 13 vols. (London: J. & A. Arch; Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute, & J. Mundell, 1792–95) [later title: The Works of the British Poets ]

• Cooke’s Pocket Edition of Select British Poets, 56 vols. (London: C. Cooke, 1794–1805)

• The Works of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, 8 vols. (Dublin: J. Moore, 1795–1802)

These collections and series—unprecedented in Britain, sprouting up in numbers, and flanked by parallel efforts to publish the novelists, essayists, sacred classics, and British drama—did nothing if not dictate versions of the canon to a wide public. This publishing phenomenon makes it difficult to deny that in the latter half of the eighteenth century the issue of canonicity was prevalent in a way not seen before.

Terry usefully articulated what had gone before, and the way he defined and elaborated a “tradition of recital” is very persuasive. He was surely right to locate “canon-forming texts” across a spectrum of works throughout the earlier periods, particularly as he traced the “line of canonical descent” passed along by one poet after another in verse celebrations of their literary forebears. But as for his contention that the eighteenth century “contributes surprisingly little to the drafting of a native canon, either to the protocols governing its recital or to its retrospective content,” I disagree on both counts.

A wholly new protocol for reciting the native canon cropped up at the end of the eighteenth century and continued into the nineteenth: publishers issued series explicitly identified as representing the native classics. Unlike the tradition of recital described by Terry, which couches the line of canonical descent within a poetic narrative, publishers’ lists of authors for sale stripped away the artistic framework; and unlike previous advertisements of the “Also to Be Had by this Bookseller” variety, these new lists served a new function, which was to allow the purchaser to keep track of other volumes in the series (already published or, in some cases, forthcoming), so that a complete set could be collected. Such lists were printed in...