Wilcox 2014

Wilcox, Helen. 1611: Authority, Gender, and the Word in Early Modern England. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.

"1611 was indeed a remarkable year for textual activity and literary production. To bring all these works side by side in one discussion is to become aware of, and indeed to celebrate, the enormous verbal energies of Jacobean England, a period when the English language was rapidly expanding, and its expressive potential was confirmed both in new works and in translations of existing ones.” (3)

"The long age of manuscript culture leading up to this moment was on the cusp of becoming recognised as an inheritance from a disappearing past, as may be seen in the contribution of a collector such as John Jones, who was at work in this period in Flintshire and on the Welsh borders copying manuscripts and compiling catalogues of their owners and locations (Lloyd, 7).” (16)

"many other authors were increasingly turning to print publication in order to make a greater impact on patrons, to achieve a wider readership and to take advantage of the great boom in the buying and selling of texts. This is indicated, for example, by the many sermons published in printed form during 1611, singly or in collections, many of them made available very soon after their initial oral delivery (Andrewes, Dillingham, Harris, Hieron, Langhorne), a trend that grew in spite of the widespread practice whereby members of the congregation kept extensive handwritten notes on the sermons they heard (Todd, 1).” (16)

'Expresse words’: Lancelot Andrewes and the sermons and devotions of 1611

"The most prominent single genre among the texts of 1611 is undoubtedly the sermon.” (113)

"The sermon is a chameleon genre, thriving on immediacy and rhetorical power yet often being printed very soon afterwards for private contemplation and prayerful re-reading.” (113)

Theophilus Higgons, 4 hour sermon at Paul’s Cross renouncing his former conversion to Catholicism; popular in print

Samuel Hieron

preachers rewriting popular sermons into treatises or devotional works (127)

"It is possible to ‘heare sermons’ but then be ‘not constant’ once the preacher has finished speaking; with a book, however, there is the opportunity for constant reference and perpetual rereading.” (129)