Doubtful Readers

When poetry was printed, poets and their publishers could no longer take for granted that readers would have the necessary knowledge and skill to read it well. By making poems available to anyone who either had the means to a buy a book or knew someone who did, print publication radically expanded the early modern reading public. These new readers, publishers feared, might not buy or like the books. Worse, their misreadings could put the authors, the publishers, orthe readers themselves at risk ...