The Novels of Daniel Defoe ed. by W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank (review)

55 After some interesting connections between Milton’s and Pope’s negative stances toward their contemporary world of printed media, Mr. Weber turns to Richardson’s Clarissa because of its obsessive concern with the material basis of the narrative itself: ‘‘The 537 letters that compose their story must be accounted for, collected, archived, and preserved, rather than allowed to disappear into Pope’s airy nothingness .’’ But when evoking Pope’s attack on ‘‘blest paper-credit’’ in the Epistle to Bathurst and linking it to Richardson’s material reliance on paper as a printer, Mr. Weber blurs the larger issue of how this London businessman also distrusted airy economic schemes and equated libertinism (‘‘free-thinking,’’ ‘‘Deism’’) to bankruptcy. As in other interdisciplinary approaches to ‘‘print culture,’’ this study promises more than it can provide. It scarcely acknowledges the importance of reprinting done by the booksellers who helped drive the literary marketplace by enhancing consumer demand for the canonical English authors—especially the triad of Shakespeare, Milton , and Spenser. Although recognizing the role of these businessmen when describing Pope’s spectacular success in manipulating them to his own ends, Mr. Weber shuns even the mention of such publishing house names as Dodsley, Brindley, Hawkins , Tonson, and others deeply invested in the promotion of these three literary icons. Mr. Weber does note Richardson’s ongoing editing of Clarissa, but gives slight attention to the frenzy in the period over textual criticism in general. For instance, he briefly refers to Theobald as the original target of The Dunciad but never mentions the cause—namely, this lawyer-scholar’s Shakespeare Restored (1726), which exposed some glaring weaknesses in Pope’s edition of Shakespeare. As a subscriber to Theobald’s edition of Shakespeare’s works (1733), Richardson deplored Pope’s vilification of this competitor. In a letter to Thomas Edwards (March 29, 1756), Richardson explained his derogatory allusion in Clarissa (1st ed., 6:273) to Pope: ‘‘who, I thought, degraded himself by setting his Face, with so much Animosity, against Theobald’s; as if he wanted to be thought a better Editor than him; When he ought to have been ashamed, with his great Talents for Versification, to have taken a sum of Money from Booksellers for a Preface only to the Edition called his, and for the Use of his Name.’’ Richardson’s reclusive friend Edwards won more than his intended share of acclaim after the publication of his incisive attack on William Warburton ’s edition of Shakespeare—first entitled a Supplement but renamed The Canons of Criticism (using Warburton’s own pompous phrase) with the third, and expanded , edition of 1750. Even though defending Warburton in this cause célèbre, Samuel Johnson quietly deferred to Edwards’s criticism in his own edition of Shakespeare . Such controversies obviously helped to stimulate buyers in the book market, but Mr. Weber is silent on editorial issues related to the business of printing. John A. Dussinger University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The Novels of Daniel Defoe, Part 1. General Editors, W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank. Volume Editors: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, ed. W. R. Owens; Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, ed. G. A. Starr; Memoirs of a Cavalier, ed. W. H. Keeble; The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the 56 Famous Captain Singleton, ed. P. N. Furbank. Pickering & Chatto: London, 2008. Pp. 1600. £424; $725. The Novels of Daniel Defoe, volumes 1 to 5, constitute the first half of the ten volume set of Defoe’s novels, the final volumes in the series of 44 volumes of the Works of Daniel Defoe. (Defoe’s Review is being published separately but in a uniform edition by Pickering & Chatto.) With the appearance of the second half of the novels in October 2009 this remarkable editorial project was brought to completion —on schedule and in only eight years. They are a fine tribute to the scholarly acumen and determination of the general editors, Messrs. Owens and Furbank, who revolutionized the Defoe canon—hacking out works of dubious provenance and establishing a new list of works certainly or very likely...