Marginal Malone

Marginal Malone
Co-organized with the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book
Friday, June 26, 2015

Books and manuscripts from the collection of Edmond Malone (1757-1812) arrived at the Bodleian Library in 1821 as a gift made by Malone’s brother Lord Sunderlin. The collection contained many rare or unique copies of early editions of Shakespeare as well as working notes and marginal annotations on his readings of Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists.

In 1936, the American student James Osborn scrupulously copied Edmond Malone’s annotations into his own copy of the 1800 edition of the Works of John Dryden, gathering Malone’s reading into his already extensive collection of English manuscripts. In the 1930s, as in the early nineteenth century, Malone’s reading continued to define an understanding of evidence in English literary scholarship.

This symposium examines the lives and afterlives of Malone’s readings of English Literature, appreciating the long influence of Malone’s critical perspective on those who agreed and disagreed with him. It takes as a particular focus Malone’s influence on the development of fields such as the study of Shakespeare and the definitions of evidence and persuasive evidence which he put forth.

Symposium
Friday, June 26, 2015
Lecture Theatre, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford
Speakers include:  Margreta de Grazia (University of Pennsylvania), Arnold Hunt (King’s College, London), Clive Hurst (Bodleian Library), Ivan Lupić (Stanford), Bill Sherman (Victoria & Albert Museum), and Tiffany Stern (Oxford).

Organized by Stephen Bernard (University College, Oxford), Alexandra Franklin (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Kathryn James (Beinecke Library, Yale), and David Scott Kastan (Yale).