The Printer as Author in Early Modern England Book History: John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art

This is the first book to demonstrate how mnemotechnic cultural commonplaces can be used to account for the look, style, and authorized content of some of the most influential books produced in early modern Britain. In his hybrid role as stationer, publisher, entrepreneur, and author, John Day, master printer of England’s Reformation, produced the premier navigation handbook, state-approved catechism and metrical psalms, Book of Martyrs, England’s first printed emblem book, and Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book. By virtue of finely honed book trade skills, dogged commitment to evangelical nation-building, and astute business acumen (including going after those who infringed his privileges), Day mobilized the typographical imaginary to establish what amounts to-and still remains-a potent and viable Protestant Memory Art.

William E. Engel is the Nick B. Williams Professor of Literature at Sewanee: The University of the South. He received his Ph.D. in English at the University of California, Berkeley, and was a dissertation fellow at the Warburg Institute. Subsequently he was William R. Hearst Fellow at the Huntington Library and later Exxon Fellow for Advanced Study. His books include Mapping Mortality (1995), Death and Drama in Renaissance England (2002), Chiastic Designs in English Literature (2009), Early Modern Poetics (2012), and (with Rory Loughnane and Grant Williams) The Memory Arts in Renaissance England (2016).