Marvell and Print Culture

Abstract

The starting point of this chapter is Marvell’s cautious relationship to publication and publicity generally and to print publication in particular. On what terms or under what conditions was publication through the press to be avoided or pursued? What were the nature of Marvell’s interactions with the various actors, institutions, and technologies of print culture throughout his career? We have a reasonably good idea of Marvell’s intimacy with the world of print as a Restoration politician and polemicist—though his ingenious manipulations of the material form of the book still bear more scrutiny. But we have some way to go in understanding Marvell’s strategic appearances in—and indeed disappearances from—printed works before 1660. For Marvell the MP, secrecy and pseudo-identity belong clearly to the arts of influence; can the same be said for the lyric poet, or is his fragmentary and reluctant identity as a print author part of some other story?