Twice the effort: Tracing the practices of stuart verse collectors through their redundant entries

In this essay, Marcy North examines a compilation oddity found in many early modern verse miscellanies - the poem entered twice into the same manuscript - and uses it to illuminate the practices of early modern verse collectors. Duplicated entries point to the kinds of source texts that verse collectors juggled, their reading and editorial practices, and their access to fashionable verse. The modest numbers of duplicates in many miscellanies and the cases in which accidental duplicates are cancelled suggest that most verse collectors were conscientious readers and editors, seeking new and better material and weeding out items they had already collected as they developed their miscellanies.