One of the people who knows most about Ponsonby at the moment is
Jeanie Brink, Tom.
Roger Kuin
>Dear Jon, Can you remeber where you read about Ponsonbie? I don't
>tink that is
>what happened, but I am doing a forensic search on FE,and anything I can know
>--more than I do now-- would be useful. Who uses "getting granular?" How
>awful! Thanks you for replying. Best to you and Tobie. tpr
>
>[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> I can't contribute to the nitty-gritty (or, as some say
>> now, 'get granular') on this subject; just some
>> questions? I recall reading some time back that
>> Ponsonby was more a publisher than a printer, which I
>> took to mean that he acquired manuscripts, farmed out
>> some if not most of the printing, then sold the books.
>> He was more the well-connected entrepreneur, maintaining
>> for his clients a certain distance from ink-stained
>> drudgery, than the printer who occupied something like
>> Errour's den. But is this true? If so, might it be the
>> case that sheets would come to Ponsonby after the
>> possibility of (further) correction had passed?
>>
>> Are many errors apparent in Book III that were not
>> listed among the Faults Escaped? If not, maybe
>> experience showed Ponsonby or somebody in his shop that
>> the printer (if it wasn't Ponsonby) had better be more
>> careful.
>>
>> I recall, one day in the Folger, holding in my two hands
>> copies of the 1590 FQ and the 1590 Arcadia, both of
>> course published by Ponsonby, very similar in typography
>> and size. Same printers? Anything to be learned about
>> FQ from studies of the 1590 Arcadia?
>>
>> Cheers, Jon Q.
>> > Some evidence that Spenser was involved in compiling the list of Faults
>> > Escaped: a very few of the corrections seem to be authorial revisions.
>> >
>> > Example: in most (but not all) copies of the 1590 quarto, FQ
>>1.6.25.5 reads
>> > "The Antelope, and Wolfe both swift and cruell"; but in at least one copy,
>> > the line reads "The Antelope, and Wolfe both fierce and fell," which is
>> > also the reading given in the list of Faults Escaped. I'm not saying that
>> > the second reading is more Spenserian than the first, but it's the kind of
>> > change that authors make and compositors (usually) don't (I think). The
>> > fact that there's a press variant as well as a notice in the corrigenda is
>> > tantalizing: was Spenser really in the printshop, reading the freshly
>> > printed sheets as they came off the press? Maybe.
>> >
>> > Other instances in which the list of Faults Escaped seems to record
>> > authorial revisions (as opposed to just proofreading) include the
>> > substitution of "Timons" for "Cleons" in 1.9.9.5, of "She" for "He" in
>> > 3.12.42 (twice), and of "her" for "him" in the same stanza. To be sure, a
> > > proofreader who was really getting into the poem could have figured out
> > > (from 1.9.4) that the pronouns in 3.12.42 needed fixin', and a
>fanatically
> > > interested proofreader might have noticed that, in 1.9.4, the name of
>> > Arthur's tutor is given (twice) as Timon, and that Cleons is the same guy.
>> > (Presumably the name is a fossil remnant of an early draft, in
>>which Arthur
>> > was schooled by someone whose name recalls Gk. kleos 'praise';
>>cf. Arthur's
>> > flirtation with Praysdesire in 2.9.39.) Again, though, this
>>seems to me the
>> > kind of thing that an _author_ notices and cares about -- if he cares at
>> > all, which apparently Spenser did.
>> >
>> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
>> > East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
>> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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