Peacey, Jason; (2023) Scattered about the streets: George Thomason's annotations and ephemeral print during the English Revolution. Electronic British Library Journal , Article 9. 10.23636/t1tj-zj59.

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Abstract

Thomason is rightly famous for his tendency to annotate individual pamphlets, and his notes have long been exploited by scholars in order to trace his connections with various authors, to contextualise individual items, and to enhance our appreciation of writers and the debates in which they participated. This chapter subjects such annotations to closer scrutiny, in order to highlight Thomason’s determination to interrogate the print revolution, difficult though this clearly proved to be. What emerges is a deeper understanding of something that clearly became evident to Thomason: that the English Revolution witnessed not just a major transformation in the commercial basis of the book trade, and the dramatic rise of ‘cheap’ print, but also a range of more or less innovative uses of print that involved non-commercial practices, from organisational tickets and forms to handbills and flyers, and material that could be posted in public or even scattered about the streets. Attending to such phenomena, and to the ways in which Thomason made them visible, enhances our appreciation of how everyday politics was transformed during the mid-seventeenth century, not least in terms of the possibilities that emerged for novel kinds of mobilisation and popular participation.

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