Textual Transmission, Reception and the Editing of Early Modern Texts 1

Beginning with one particularly compelling Civil War manuscript – a collage of manuscript notes and printed pages torn from books, assembled by Sir John Gibson in Durham Castle in the 1650s – this article examines the circulation of texts in seventeenth‐century England. In particular, it explores the malleability of early modern texts in both manuscript and print, in order to suggest that certain entrenched ideas about early modern print, manuscript, authorship and readers might be revised. The article concludes by suggesting that editorial practice might respond to these ideas by rethinking the ways in which early modern texts are presented to contemporary readers.