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Damaged Type and Areopagitica's Clandestine Printers
- Author(s):
- Max G\'Sell, Shruti Rijhwani, Christopher Warren (see profile) , Pierce Williams
- Date:
- 2020
- Group(s):
- LLC 17th-Century English, TC Digital Humanities, TC Law and the Humanities, TM Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography
- Subject(s):
- Milton, John, 1608-1674, Printing--Social aspects, Bibliography, English Civil War (Great Britain , Printing
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Areopagitica, liberty of the press, tolerationism, Milton, Print culture, English civil wars, Typography
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/9kyw-3j44
- Abstract:
- Milton’s Areopagitica (1644) is one of the most significant texts in the history of the freedom of the press, and yet the pamphlet’s clandestine printers have successfully eluded identification for over 375 years. By examining distinctive and dam-aged type pieces from 100 pamphlets from the 1640s, this article attributes the print-ing of Milton’s Areopagitica to the London printers Matthew Simmons and Thomas Paine, with the possible involvement of Gregory Dexter. It further reveals a sophisti-cated ideological program of clandestine printing executed collaboratively by Paine and Simmons throughout 1644 and 1645 that includes not only Milton’s Areopagitica but also Roger Williams’s The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, William Walwyn’s The Compassionate Samaritane, Henry Robinson’s Liberty of Conscience, Robinson’s John the Baptist, and Milton’s Of Education, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article Show details
- Pub. DOI:
- 10.5325/miltonstudies.62.1.0001
- Publisher:
- The Pennsylvania State University Press
- Pub. Date:
- 2020-2-19
- Journal:
- Milton Studies
- Volume:
- 62
- Issue:
- 1
- Page Range:
- 1 - 47
- ISSN:
- 0076-8820
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 3 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
- Share this:
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