This collection of essays models and refines the study of these complicated volumes. Using extensive textual and bibliographical evidence, it offers stimulating new readings of literature, politics and religion in the early modern period, and promises to make important interventions in the history of the book. '... a wide ranging collection of essays which explore the significant and sometimes subaltern manuscript culture of sixteenth- and especially seventeenth-century England.' Journal of Jesuit Studies 'The book poses numerous helpful questions about how we read miscellanies that did not conceive of themselves as miscellaneous, and how they might prompt us to rethink our own habits of reading.' Times Literary Supplement 'This fine study ... deserves to occupy a prominent place in the literature. Featuring a range of established and emerging scholars, it displays a potent blend of panoptic perspective - the theoretical issues raised by miscellany production and reception, such as material and social textuality - and forensic textual anaylsis.' Review of English Studies