Professor Adam Smyth

Adam Smyth
Professor; Tutorial Fellow, Balliol College
adam.smyth@ell.ox.ac.uk

I work on the intersection between literary and material forms, primarily (but not exclusively) in terms of texts from 16th and 17th century England. I have written three monographs – Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018), runner-up in the SHARP DeLong Book History Prize; Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Profit and Delight: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640-1682 (Wayne State University Press, 2004) – and I have edited or co-edited four collections: Book Parts, with Dennis Duncan, a collection of essays on the history of parts of a book (title-page, errata list, chapter heading, blurb, index, wrapper, running-head, etc.) (Oxford University Press 2019); A History of English Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (Palgrave 2014, with Gill Partington); and A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England (Boydell and Brewer, 2004). I also co-edited, with Juliet Fleming and William Sherman, a special edition of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2015) on ‘Renaissance Collage: Towards a New History of Reading’, exploring knives, scissors and glue as tools of reading. I've also published on Shakespeare and laughter; George Herbert and Little Gidding (my 2012 article for English Literary Renaissance won best article in ELR for the year); authorship; books and the senses; William Strode; Ben Jonson's creative practices; jokes; diaries; commonplace books and verse miscellanies; almanacs; reading practices and annotated books; textual transmission; and satire. With Professor James Daybell, I am the co-editor of Routledge's (formerly Ashgate's) book series Material Readings in Early Modern Culture: the series currently has 23 titles. With Gill Partington and Simon Morris, I am co-founder and co-editor of the material texts journal, Inscription (first issue in 2020).

 

In 2018 I received the Special Recognition Award at the Oxford University Student Union awards for teaching, for outstanding service to the undergraduate and graduate community.

 

Current and recent research projects include:

  • editing Pericles for Arden Shakespeare (4th series)
  • writing The Book: A Story in Thirteen Extraordinary Lives, a history of the book told through the lives of book-makers, under contract with Bodley Head
  • building an online database of printed waste in books, with Anna Reynolds (York) and Megan Heffernan (DePaul)
  • editing the Oxford Handbook to the History of the Book in Early Modern England

I enjoy thinking of creative ways of presenting my work. Recent and current creative projects include 13 March 1911 (reviewed here), a collaged account of one day in history; a collaboration with Laurence Sterne's Shandy Hall, as a Knowledge Exchange Fellow, on an exhibition on writing surfaces; a collaboration with artist Nicola Dale on an immersive installation that explores the experience of the archive. I am also a co-founder of the 39 Steps Press printing collective.

 

I enjoy presenting my work both within the academy (recent talks include Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, the Shakespeare Institute, Exeter, and UEA) and beyond: I write regularly for the Times Literary Supplement (for example, here) and the London Review of Books (for example, here), and have appeared on TV and radio in the UK and abroad (for example, here).

I work on the intersection between literary and material forms, primarily (but not exclusively) in terms of texts from 16th and 17th century England. I have written three monographs – Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Profit and Delight: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640-1682 (Wayne State University Press, 2004) – and I have edited or co-edited three collections: A History of English Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (Palgrave 2014, with Gill Partington); and A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England (Boydell and Brewer, 2004). I also co-edited, with Juliet Fleming and William Sherman, a special edition of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2015) on ‘Renaissance Collage: Towards a New History of Reading’, exploring knives, scissors and glue as tools of reading. I've also published on Shakespeare and laughter; George Herbert and Little Gidding; authorship; William Strode; Ben Jonson's creative practices; jokes; diaries; commonplace books; almanacs; reading practices; textual transmission; and satire. With Professor James Daybell, I am the co-editor of Routledge's (formerly Ashgate's) book series Material Readings in Early Modern Culture: the series currently has 19 titles.

Current research includes:

- editing Pericles for Arden Shakespeare (4th series)

- co-editing Book Parts with Dennis Duncan: a collection of essays on the history of parts of a book (title-page, errata list, chapter heading, blurb, index, etc.) (forthcoming, OUP 2018)

- writing articles on proof pages (with Markman Ellis), and on a newly discovered manuscript miscellany.

I enjoy presenting my work both within the academy (in 2017-18, I will give talks at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, Exeter, and UEA) and beyond: I write regularly for the Times Literary Supplement (for example, here) and the London Review of Books (for example, here), and have appeared on TV and radio in the UK and abroad (for example, here). I host a series of podcasts on work on the history of the book currently going on here at Oxford University: you can listen to this here. With literary journalist James Kidd, I am the co-host of the literary podcast and radio show, Litbits, described by the Guardian as one of the best three literary podcasts.

Papers on English literature from 1350 to 1660; graduate teaching in early modern literature, including the history of the book 1450-1650.

College website

Publications

  • Diaries

    2020
    |
    Chapter
    |
    The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714

  • Book Parts

    2019
    |
    c-book
    What would an anatomy of the book look like? There is the main text, of course, the file that the author proudly submits to their publisher. But around this, hemming it in on the page or enclosing it at the front and back of the book, there are dozens of other texts—page numbers and running heads, copyright statements and errata lists—each possessed of particular conventions, each with their own lively histories. To consider these paratexts—recalling them from the margins, letting them take centre stage—is to be reminded that no book is the sole work of the author whose name appears on the cover; rather, every book is the sum of a series of collaborations. It is to be reminded, also, that not everything is intended for us, the readers. There are sections that are solely directed at others—binders, librarians, lawyers—parts of the book that, if they are working well, are working discreetly, like a theatrical prompt, whispering out of the audience's ear-shot Book Parts is a bold and imaginative intervention in the fast growing field of book history: it pulls the book apart. Over twenty-two chapters, Book Parts tells the story of the components of the book: from title pages to endleaves; from dust jackets to indexes—and just about everything in between. Book Parts covers a broad historical range that runs from the pre-print era to the digital, bringing together the expertise of some of the most exciting scholars working on book history today in order to shine a new light on these elements hiding in plain sight in the books we all read.

  • 13 March 1911

    2019
    |
    Book

  • Book Marks: Object Traces in Early Modern Books

    2019
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Early Modern English Marginalia
    The chapters of this book go beyond the case study, however, and raise broad historical, cultural, and theoretical questions about the strange, marvelous, metamorphic thing we call the book, and the equally multiplicitous, eccentric, and ...
    Literary Criticism

  • Material Texts in Early Modern England

    2018
    |
    Book
    What was a book in early modern England? By combining book history, bibliography and literary criticism, Material Texts in Early Modern England explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books were stranger, richer things than scholars have imagined. Adam Smyth examines important aspects of bibliographical culture which have been under-examined by critics: the cutting up of books as a form of careful reading; book destruction and its relation to canon formation; the prevalence of printed errors and the literary richness of mistakes; and the recycling of older texts in the bodies of new books, as printed waste. How did authors, including Herbert, Jonson, Milton, Nashe and Cavendish, respond to this sense of the book as patched, transient, flawed, and palimpsestic? Material Texts in Early Modern England recovers these traits and practices, and so crucially revises our sense of what a book was, and what a book might be.
    Literary Criticism
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