Acknowledgments

Of the many things that the women of Little Gidding, Edward Benlowes, and John Bagford have taught me, the most important is that we never labor alone. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the communities whose support has made this book possible.

Many librarians, curators, conservators, cataloguers, digital specialists, and other staff at various libraries and archives patiently answered my questions, provided access and photographs, consulted with me on digital publishing, and negotiated permissions, to name just a few of the tasks they have undertaken on behalf of this book project. For their help, I would like to thank Christian Algar, Laurie Allen, Clarck Drieshen, Anne Dutton, Scott Enderle, Wayne G. Hammond, H. C. Harron, Nicholas Herman, Josh Honn, Andrea Immel, Kathryn James, Kaitlyn Krieg, Elizabeth Lawrence, Anna Tione Levine, Christopher Lippa, Jo Maddocks, Kathryn McKee, Gaye Morgan, Jay Moschella, Michael Overgard, John Overton, Sandy Paul, Aaron Pratt, Sasha Renninger, Amanda Saville, Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Tessa Shaw, Jane Siegel, Catherine Sutherland, Stephen Tabor, Emily Walhout, and Heather Wolfe. Among these names, there are a few whose knowledge was crucial when I was stuck on a particularly difficult puzzle, and I thank these individuals separately in notes in chapters. I am sure I am still omitting many names, and so I want to emphasize my deep appreciation to anyone who assisted me in libraries and archives, directly or indirectly. No historical scholarship is possible without your stewardship of the past.

I have been blessed with supportive research communities at the two universities where I have held positions while writing this book. In my first job at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Dan Anderson and David Baker provided invaluable encouragement—Dan as someone who has been doing creative/critical publishing since long before I got involved in the field, and David as a mentor and friend who transitioned into digital humanities at a point in his career when most people would be resting on their laurels. Both are inspirations to me. I would also like to thank the community of early modernists and digital humanists at UNC, Chapel Hill, while I was there, including Reid Barbour (who got to Little Gidding well before me), Mary Floyd-Wilson, Mary Learner, Megan Matchinske, Joe Viscomi, Jessica Wolfe, and the students, staff, and affiliated faculty of the Digital Innovation Lab and the Med+Ren Colloquium.

At the University of Pennsylvania, I have been quite happily surrounded by fellow book-nerds. I am especially thankful to Jim English, Zachary Lesser, and Peter Stallybrass for their mentorship and intellectual companionship. As scholars of books, media, and materiality whose work crosses periods and disciplines, their careers collectively embody the spirit of curiosity at the center of this project. They are also more generous with their knowledge than Bagford himself, and Peter alone has more than once broken my Dropbox by sharing massive folders of pictures of books. The ideas in this project would not have developed in the direction they have without the support also of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts and the History of Material Texts Seminar community, including (but certainly not limited to) Julie Davis, Doug Emery, Lynne Farrington, Mitch Fraas, Glenda Goodman, Will Noel, John Pollack, Dot Porter, Lynn Ransom, Sarah Reidell, and Jerry Singerman. I am grateful to all. The more literary and historical portions of this project also benefited from occasional participation in the Med/Ren seminar, and I thank Rebecca Bushnell, Melissa Sanchez, Emily Steiner, the presenters, and the participants for the intellectual stimulation. The digital portions of this project especially were nurtured at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities. I am grateful to Stewart Varner and the advisory board for their support, and to the participants in the Mellon seminars for engaging with these ideas at various stages.

This project was born as a dissertation about Little Gidding, written in the Department of English at Duke University, and while barely any words from that text survive in the present iteration, the concepts would not have taken shape without the early guidance and inspiration of Cathy Davidson, N. Katherine Hayles, Len Tennenhouse, and especially my advisor Maureen Quilligan. I feel very lucky to have had early mentors who nurtured every weird quirk in my writing and thinking.

In addition to the communities at my home institutions, this project has also been vastly improved by a broad network of readers and interlocutors. Jacqueline Cowan, Paul Dyck, Juliet Fleming, Roger Gaskell, Randall McLeod, Marissa Nicosia, Bill Sherman, Adam Smyth, Thomas Ward, and Sarah Werner have each taken time to engage with portions of the book through reading or discussion, which have been made better for it. Claire Bourne, Josh Calhoun, Megan Heffernan, Adam Hooks, and Tara Lyons provided extensive discussion and feedback on chapter 2 at a crucial moment in its development. I am grateful to them all.

Claire, Megan, Tara, Mary Caton Lingold, and Sarah Wasserman additionally provided feedback on a draft of the Introduction, as well as much-needed drinks, GIFs, and friendship throughout the project; they are each brilliant scholars and my work (and my life) is better for knowing them. My first and toughest reader has always been Fran McDonald, who never fails to know what I am trying to say better than I do. Her brain is my brain’s copilot, or “the Goose to my Maverick,” as she suggested I edit this sentence. (See what I mean?)

Nearly every word of this book was presented at some point during its writing. For their invitations and feedback, I thank the audiences and organizers at the Yale Program in the History of the Book (organized by Kathryn James, Andrew Brown, Trina Hyun, and Cathy DeRose), the Songscapes conference at University of Toronto (organized by Scott Trudell, Katherine Larson, and Sarah F. Williams), the University of Maryland BookLab (organized by Matthew Kirschenbaum and Kari Kraus), the Histories, Theories, and Uses of Waste Paper in Early Modern England symposium at Balliol College, Oxford (organized by Megan Heffernan, Anna Reynolds, and Adam Smyth), the History of Material Texts Seminar at Penn (organized by John Pollack, Jerry Singerman, and Peter Stallybrass), the NYU Early Modern Working Group (organized by Juliet Fleming), the Northwestern Digital Humanities Lab (organized by Josh Honn and Wendy Wall), and the Princeton Rare Books Working Group (organized by Jessica Terekhov, Sierra Eckert, Eric White, and Gabriel Swift).

Building the digital assets for this project would not have been possible without the support of the Mellon Foundation, an NEH–Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication, an NEH Open Book Fellowship, the Digital Innovation Lab at UNC Chapel Hill, and the Price Lab for Digital Humanities at Penn. The Katharine Jefferts Schori Award from the Episcopal Women’s History Project also made possible the digitization of the earliest Little Gidding harmony. The resources provided through these grants and fellowships supported my collaboration with Liza Daly on the Manicule app, which was subsequently improved through collaborations with Cassidy Holahan and Aylin Malcolm. The Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program and the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships additionally supported my work with Zoe Braccia on Susanna Collet’s commonplace book and the social network of Humphrey Moseley, as well as my work with Zoe, Penny Bee (Stacey Fox), and Lauren Kim on the editions of the Little Gidding harmonies and John Bagford’s album. Emilie Friedman provided additional help with the digital edition of the Cotsen Harmony. Terence Smyre at the University of Minnesota Press has been invaluable in loading the digital assets of this project onto the Manifold Platform.

I am grateful to my editor Doug Armato, who has believed in my odd vision from the beginning. To his assistant Zenyse Miller, production coordiantor Rachel Moeller, copy editor Merle Brett Kendall, assistant managing editor Mike Stoffel, and all the staff at the University of Minnesota Press who aided in the production of this book, I thank you for bringing this text into materiality. My thanks also to Simon Davies, who expertly indexed the book.

To Phyllis, Daniel, and Maxime, I express my deepest appreciation. Their unconditional love seems to make all things possible.