Paul Voss has a great article on this, addressing the economics of printing. A
printer or author would certainly not decline patronage if a plea were
successful, but such benificence was notoriously unpredictable, meaning the
epistle to the dedicatory almost always was crafted to shape a more general
readership -- most obviously by crafting an ideal reader, in the imagined
patron, who serves to guide any real reader through purchase and consuption of
the book; then the real patron's being dead or alive doesn't matter much. The
resonance with poetic invocation (e.g. Beatrice) and the epigram is really
important. I don't have EEBO from where I am, but I'd be curious to know if
dedicatary choices and rhetoric differ in less "literary" books...
Michael
Quoting andrew zurcher <[log in to unmask]>:
> Something I meant to mention earlier, but forgot, alas:
> Virgils Gnat. Long since dedicated To the most noble and excellent Lord,
> the Earle of Leicester, late deceased. [1590]
>
> Michael: Probably so (overstated), but an author ca 1590-1600 (at least)
> stood to gain more than payment from a successful dedication: further
> employment, political intervention, a place to go when the plague hit, and
> so on; and publishers stood to gain sales. In his account of the calling
> in of Mother Hubberds Tale in 1591, Tresham makes a note of the dedication
> of the work, which seems to him to increase its notoriety and must-have
> value.
>
> az
>
>
> Andrew Zurcher
> Tutor and Director of Studies in English
> Queens' College
> Cambridge CB3 9ET
> United Kingdom
> +44 1223 335 572
>
> hast hast post hast for lyfe
>
> > general, I have agreed with others who have suggested that the payment
> > function of the epistle dedicatory, though continuously present through the
>
> > 17th century, has been overstated in scholarship, with respect to its
> > occurence and importance to authors and printers. However, I can't think
> of
>
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