English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and Print, 1475-1525

Janis Svilpis is a professor of English at the University of Calgary.

This is a fascinating but ultimately frustrating book. Carlson assesses
printed and manuscript publications by Pietro Carmeliano, Filippo
Alberici, Bernard André, Desiderius Erasmus, Robert Whittinton, Wynkyn
de Worde, and Thomas More. Six of his chapters analyze strategies used
by humanists to invite patronage and build reputation; one chapter deals
with the interests of publishers. The emphasis throughout is on material
advantage, profit, the struggle to get ahead. Occasionally, Carlson
touches on issues of intention and literary interpretation—most
tellingly in the last chapter, where More’s epitaphs on Henry Abyngdon
and his epigram on Bernard André are shown to shift their meanings
depending on the context of their publication.

These case studies are detailed and individually interesting, and all
of them raise questions about books and their modes of publication. It
is, therefore, frustrating to find that Carlson’s three-page
conclusion offers no conclusions to speak of. Where are the observations
on changing relationships between manuscript and print, and on changes
in patronage? What about the relationship between literary and national
politics or between literature and publication? The book hints at
partial answers to such questions, but its interests seem often more
antiquarian than properly historical. It makes a real contribution to
bibliographical and cultural study, but a smaller one than it might have
made.