Chapter 2 - Making Collections

Summary

Chapter 2 explores the interest of figures such as George Thomason, Anthony Wood, and Narcissus Luttrell in the paraphernalia of texts that subsequently became classified as ephemera single-sheet ballads, advertisements, pamphlets, and tickets. This interest is linked with the development of early Enlightenment associational culture and the importance of such kinds of print in catering to and archiving the quotidian, sociable life of the developing public sphere. I discuss how such material was archived and preserved in the form of ‘collections’ and in the last section of the chapter outline how such ephemera books were important in literary history, Romantic-period bibliography, and also the idea of a repository of the archives of the nation, a public records office, as represented by William Godwin’s interest in the Thomason tracts.