EARLY MODERN ENGLISH ALMANACS PREPARE A PUBLIC FOR NEWS Robert J. Woodruff 3rd ...

386 Pages·2014·13 MB·English

ABSTRACT

Title of Document: FORETELLING THE EVERYDAY: EARLY
MODERN ENGLISH ALMANACS
PREPARE A PUBLIC FOR NEWS

Robert J. Woodruff 3rd, Doctor of
Philosophy, 2014

Directed By: Professor Emerita Maurine Beasley
Philip Merrill College of Journalism

This dissertation examines 376 English almanacs printed from 1595 to
1640 for the extent to which they provided basic, everyday information
that ordinary citizens sought to increase their agency and place in the
world. These almanacs, appearing annually, had highly conventional
content features repeated in many different editions. Analysis of twenty
of these components show patterns that make it possible for a researcher
to systematically discern the information needs and appetites of many
people who may not have been represented in the written record.
Because these almanacs were inexpensive and printed in large numbers,
they are estimated to have been in one of every three households in
England in this period, making them the most common print product of
the day.
Since the almanacs were a monopoly of the Worshipful Company of
Stationers, the printer’s and bookseller’s guild, their conventional, highly
structured content can be read as coherently responsive to the almanacs’
many buyers and users. The considerable importance of the revenue
from exclusive almanac production to the guild’s financial stability
provided incentive for responsiveness to the public. The components
analyzed, including various forms of calendars, geographical, historical
and health information, and modes of calculation and measurement,
show a consistent pattern even though individual almanac brands
flourished and expired during this 45-year period. This analysis
explicates the value of these component features to the almanacs’ users
and contends it enhanced their agency. Almanacs’ predictive astrological
content, this dissertation argues, complemented their access to
information by framing a planning process for the coming year, as well as
enabling agency-enhancing play or rehearsal. The almanac, also a
gateway to improved literacy, is presented as the essential, indispensable
information tool for the ordinary people who played a significant role in
the civil wars period (1641-60). Without the information base and
expectation of annual publication provided by the almanacs, this
dissertation contends, the public would not have been prepared to
recognize the difference between everyday life and new developments, the
routine and the unusual – nor the value of actual news when regularly
provided. The almanacs enabled and prepared ordinary people in
England to be receptive to what came to be called journalism.
FORETELLING THE EVERYDAY: EARLY MODERN ENGLISH
ALMANACS PREPARE A PUBLIC FOR NEWS

By
Robert J. Woodruff 3rd

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2014

Advisory Committee:
Professor Emerita Maurine Beasley, Chair, Journalism
Assistant Professor Kalyani Chadha, Journalism
Associate Professor Ira Chinoy, Journalism
Associate Professor Emeritus John Newhagen,
Journalism
Visiting Assistant Professor Sabrina Baron, History
Professor Philip Soergel, History
© Copyright by
Robert J. Woodruff 3rd
2014
Acknowledgements:

Many thanks to the British Library and ProQuest for their timely
permission to use imagery from Early English Books Online.

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Contents
Contents .................................................................................................... iii
List of Figures ........................................................................................ vi
List of Tables ......................................................................................... vii
Introduction: News and Where It Has Led ............................................... 1
Chapter 1: A PUBLIC’S PATH FROM INFORMATION TO NEWS ............... 6
History is Silent about Non-elite Publics for Information ...............................9
Scope and Purpose: Publics for Information Become Publics for News ......... 13
Key Questions: Almanacs, their Makers, and their Public............................ 14
Definitions: News as a Compound of Routine and Unusual ......................... 19
Plan of this Dissertation ............................................................................ 21
Early Modern Almanacs and Everyday Life in England 1595-1640 .............. 24
Chapter 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE on Early Modern Almanacs
and their Context .................................................................................. 28
Almanacs in Early Modern Historical Writing ............................................. 29
Almanacs as a Genre of Cheap Print .......................................................... 36
Cheap Print in the Framework of Print Culture ........................................... 39
Print Culture’s Materiality ......................................................................... 47
The Worshipful Company of Stationers....................................................... 49
A Political Dimension ................................................................................. 52
Electronic Resources are Primary ............................................................... 56
Chapter 3: THEORY AND METHOD in Search of a Public Organized by
Discourse .............................................................................................. 59
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory: Information-seeking Behavior ............... 62
The Wider Range of “Uses and Gratifications” Theory .................................. 67
Publics and their Development ................................................................... 73
Theory of a Method: “History from Below” ................................................... 78
Method: A Narrative View of Almanacs’ Development 1595-1640 ................. 83
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Twenty Component Features in the Survey ................................................. 90
Chapter 4: CONTEXTUALIZATION – Information, Monopoly and the
Thread of Print Culture ......................................................................... 94
THE EARLY INFORMATION SOCIETY IN STUART ENGLAND ...................... 96
The Jacobean Interval: James I follows Elizabeth I .................................... 103
Print in Politics, Elizabeth I to Charles I ................................................... 109
THE STATIONERS AND THEIR ALMANACS .............................................. 112
An Aid to Everyday Life ............................................................................ 123
Cheap Print, but Who’s the Winner? ........................................................ 124
A Plenum of Almanacs – the Stationers’ Solution ...................................... 134
A Perennial Business Tool: Cost Containment .......................................... 142
CHAPTER 5: THE ENGLISH ALMANACS’ DEVELOPMENT .................. 146
Frames for Examination and Analysis ...................................................... 152
The Material Almanac: Anatomy of a Genre .............................................. 153
A Bundle of Component Features ............................................................. 155
Development of English Almanacs: Slow Path to Monopoly........................ 162
Astrology and the Advancement of Science ............................................... 168
Almanacs and the Ordering of Time ......................................................... 171
Almanacs’ Structure and Paratextuality: Literacy Device? ......................... 175
Chapter 6 ANALYSIS: Almanacs in the Marketplace – Continuity and
Change ............................................................................................... 181
Timeframes for Analysis........................................................................... 184
Competition from Within and Without the Genre ...................................... 190
Anatomy of the Almanacs: Features and Innovations ................................ 193
Component Features Group: Defining, Dividing and Articulating the Civic
Year ........................................................................................................ 195
Component Features Group: Locating Citizenship, Civitas, Nation ............ 204
Component Features Group: Mastery of Nature and the Body— A “System of
the World” ............................................................................................... 212
Component Features: Helpers in the Values of an Orderly System ............. 230
Astrology: How Believable, How Much Believed? ....................................... 232
THE TRANSITION: 1595-1615 ................................................................. 244
From Watkins & Roberts to the Stationers’ Corporate Management ........... 246
Early Confidence and Expansion of the Brands ........................................ 269
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Almanac Features in James I’s Later Years – 1615 to 1625 ....................... 295
The Compilers of 1615-1625 .................................................................... 298
The Accession of Charles I and the Cambridge Printers’ Challenge ............ 311
The Lessons of Competition ..................................................................... 313
The Stationers Benefited from the Incubator of Monopoly ......................... 319
Chapter 7 CONCLUSION: Almanacs and their Engagement with an
Emerging Public 1595-1640 ................................................................ 321
DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS: THE STATIONERS’ ALMANACS 1603-1640 ... 321
Reprise: The Research Questions ............................................................. 325
Contours of Development ......................................................................... 325
Almanacs, Users and the Nature of the Periodical ..................................... 336
Almanacs as Image, Paratext and Content ................................................ 339
LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY AND UNEXPLORED TERRAIN ................... 348
Other Limitations .................................................................................... 350
Epilogue: Prophecy Falls Behind Events in Time of War ............................ 353
Always Cautious, the Almanacs Ignore the Civil Wars ............................... 354
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED .......................................... 357
Primary Sources: ..................................................................................... 357
Secondary and other sources: .................................................................. 359

v
List of Figures

Illustration: 1. Perkins 1631 almanac with prognostication front……… 17
Illustration: 2. Allestree 1631 almanac, “blank” with annotations ……148
Illustration: 3. Perkins 1631 almanac showing “Zodiacal Body” ………157
Illustration: 4. Perkins 1631 almanac with historical timeline …….…..172
Illustration: 5. Woodhouse 1624 almanac with court terms ……………198
Illustration: 6. Woodhouse 1624 almanac with monthly entries ………221
Illustration: 7. Gilden 1624 almanac with weather prediction table ….234

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