Manuscript Commonplace Books, Literature, and Reading in Early Modern England

This essay considers three manuscript commonplace books with extracts from literary works in the vernacular: one by a member of the Sidney circle; one by an anonymous university student or tutor; and one by a country gentleman, Edward Pudsey. With their different types of readers and reading matter, reading methods, and goals of reading, these manuscripts complicate the paradigms of the “pragmatic” and “recreational” reader and highlight the need to move toward a model of reading that takes account of the multiple material, social, and intellectual contexts that shaped the reception of literature in early modern England.