“And every day new Authors doe appeare…”: Labelling the Author in the Front Matter of Thomas Beedome’s Poems Divine, and Humane (1641)

Abstract

In 1641, Thomas Beedome’s first and only book, Poems Divine, and Humane , was published posthumously. Considering this volume of poetry in the context of a proliferation of poetry publishing in mid-seventeenth century England and accepting the idea that early modern paratexts provided an ideal site for the renegotiation and manifestation of authorship, I argue that throughout the front matter of Beedome’s book, the largest part of which is taken up by commendatory poetry, a concept of the author, not only as singular creator, but also as proprietor of his work, is created. This essay shows how the writers of the commendatory verses try to single out Beedome by almost obsessively labelling him as a worthy author, comparing him favourably with classical and contemporary poets, and affirming the proprietary relationship between Beedome and his poems.

Full text

Sarah Herbe. “‘And every day new Authors doe appeare…’: Labelling the Author in the Front Matter
of Thomas Beedome’s Poems Divine, and Humane (1641).” Authorship 3.1 (Spring 2014).
Web: < http://www.authorship.ugent.be>.
“And every day new Authors doe appeare…”:
Labelling the Author in the Front Matter of Thomas Beedome’s
Poems Divine, and Humane (1641)
SARAH HERBE
And every day new Authors doe appeare,
As they the paper Merchants factors were,
And boast themselves the muses sons, when they,
Rime onely for some life-preserving pay.
Expect here no such Author, if thou’t looke,
On th’inside more then th’outside of the Booke,
Put on thy judgements eyes, and thou shalt find,
This Authors fancy rich, as was his mind.
– from W. C., “On his deserving Friend, Master Beedom,
and his Poems”, A5r, ll. 5-12
Abstract: In 1641, Thomas Beedome’s first and only book, Poems Divine, and Humane, was published
posthumously. Considering this volume of poetry in the context of a proliferation of poetry publishing in
mid-seventeenth century England and accepting the idea that early modern paratexts provided an ideal
site for the renegotiation and manifestation of authorship, I argue that throughout the front matter of
Beedome’s book, the largest part of which is taken up by commendatory poetry, a concept of the author,
not only as singular creator, but also as proprietor of his work, is created. This essay shows how the
writers of the commendatory verses try to single out Beedome by almost obsessively labelling him as a
worthy author, comparing him favourably with classical and contemporary poets, and affirming the
proprietary relationship between Beedome and his poems.
Contributor: Sarah Herbe is Assistant Professor at the Department of English and American Studies,
University of Salzburg. Her research interests include life writing, paratexts, seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century poetry, and relationships between poetry and popular culture. Her PhD thesis on Characters in
New British Hard Science Fiction with a Focus on Genetic Engineering in Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds and
Brian Stableford was published in 2012 (Winter). She is the editor of From the Cradle to the Grave: Life
Course Models in Literary Genres (2011) and New Developments in the European Fantastic (2012).
In 1641, Thomas Beedome’s first and only book, Poems Divine, and Humane, was published
posthumously. It included the long narrative poem “The Jealous Lover, or, The Constant Maid”
and sixty lyric poems and epigrams, divided into religious and mundane poems. Beedome is one
of more than thirty named authors of poems listed by the ESTC for 1641; when one includes
broadside publications, more than a hundred print-publications of poems appeared that year.
Nigel Smith argues that “[t]he capacity to put something into print grew in the 1640s” after the
“end of the royal censorship and the growth of the capacity of the presses” (23). However, Smith
further notes that the “often-claimed explosion of publications after the collapse of censorship in
the early 1640s […] is most difficult to assess accurately […].” (24) The front matter of Thomas

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Beedome’s Poems Divine, and Humane (1641),1 from which the lines quoted in my epigraph are
taken, provides at least some evidence that people writing and publishing in the early 1640s
shared the impression that there was a proliferation of new authors in the marketplace at the
time. The writers of the commendatory poems that preface Beedome’s work furthermore agree
that publishing poetry has become a fashion, a common and widespread activity. In the first line
of Em. D.’s “To his Friend the Author, Master Thomas Beedom before his death, on these his
Poems” it is acknowledged that “This is the riming Age” (A5v): everybody “quaffs” (l. 5) at
Helicon today,2 so that “Each garded foot-boy belch[es] out Poetrie” (l. 6). The writers of the
commendatory poems prefixed to Beedome’s poems addressed this proliferation, perceived it as
a threat to the quality of true poetry and reacted to it by attempting to single out Beedome by
almost obsessively labelling him as a worthy author, comparing him favourably with classical
and contemporary poets, and affirming the proprietary relationship between Beedome and his
poems. Throughout the front matter, the largest part of which is taken up by commendatory
poetry, a concept of the author not only as singular creator, but also as proprietor of his work is
created. Further, while the proliferation of print-published poetry and the idea that poetry could
be published for the sake of financial gains are denounced, the advantages of print-publishing
poetry, such as making the author’s work accessible and maintaining his memory, are
recognised and embraced by the commendatory poets and Beedome himself.
The front matter of early modern books, which includes “anything other than the text
proper, including the title page, preface, frontispiece, dedicatory epistles and poems, tables,
indices, errata, and colophons” (Voss 735) and thus corresponds to what Gérard Genette has
termed “peritext” (5), was an important site for the manifestation, re-negotiation and
presentation of writers as individual authors and for endowing them with authority (see Dunn
and Saenger). Commendatory verses as part of the front matter were regularly prefixed to
poetry collections from the late sixteenth century onwards and the convention reached its peak
in the mid-seventeenth century (see Williams 1-5). The flourishing of commendatory verse thus
coincided with a critical phase in the understanding of authorship. According to Michael
Saenger, there was a “move from an understanding of collaborative textual authority to a
concept of a more singular author” (18) in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
and printed collections of poetry which provided the name of the author on the title page
contributed to this development. The first collections of English poetry appeared in the second
half of the sixteenth century (see Marotti 1991), the first of which was Songes and Sonettes,
written by the ryght honourable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other, published in
1557 and better known to posterity as Tottel’s Miscellany; and “in the last third of the sixteenth
century, single-author editions of poems came on the market, as writers and publishers started
1 An online version of Beedome’s book is available here:
<http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=chadwyck_ep/uvaGenText/tei/chep_1.1344.xml;chunk.id=d4;toc.dept
h=1;toc.id=d3;brand=default;query=Have%20Heart#1> This transcript, however, is incomplete: the Latin poem
“In obitum Lachrymabilem, Thomas Beedome, nuper defunct, et in praeclara ingenii sui Monumenta, iam
primum edita” by Henry Glapthorne is left out, as is Glapthorne’s prose address “To the Reader”.
2 The same motif is employed in Samuel Sheppard’s address “To the Reader” prefixed to his Epigrams (1651),
though there it is “the Effeminate Gallant” who “boasts, that he hath [poesy] at his beck, and can quaffe up all
Helicon at one draught” (A4v). In his “Elegie, on his Ingenious friend, the deserving Author, Master Thomas
Beedome” Thomas Nabbes speaks of a “new Helicon”, in whose creation Beedome, now that he is dead, is
involved (B3r, l. 44). Allison Shell sees this passage as a possible source of inspiration of Francis Chetwinde’s
poem “New Hellicon”, published the year after Beedome’s Poems (274).

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to claim a new respect for literary authorship and print came to be regarded less as a ‘stigma’
than as a sign of sociocultural prestige.” (Marotti 1995 211)
According to Biester, “[p]oems commending poets in the seventeenth century were
expected to do three things: treat the poet as miraculous, or capable of producing wonder; praise
the poet’s wit, either for its boldness or, later in the century, for its restraint; and praise the style
of a male poet as ‘manly’.” (507) Chandler emphasises the advertising functions of
commendatory poetry in the context of the “growth of capitalism” and the developing “practice
of mass advertising”, namely “[t]o advertise the book to book-buyers”, “[t]o advertise the
author(s) to patrons and book-buyers” and “[t]o influence the interpretation of the book by any
readers” (733). While much criticism on commendatory verse focuses on poetry written by and
for Ben Jonson, who is credited with setting the standards for much of seventeenth-century
commendatory verse (see Chandler, Lyon or Parfitt), the example of the minor seventeenth-
century poet Thomas Beedome shows that the effort of creating a commendatory apparatus for
print-publications was not restricted to the better-known poets of the period. All of the functions
outlined by Biester and Chandler, apart from advertising the author to patrons, are discernible
in the front matter of Beedome’s book, together with the intention to construct and affirm
Beedome’s status as singular author and poet. In order to locate the front matter of Beedome’s
Poems within the conventions of seventeenth-century poetry publishing, my reading of
Beedome’s Poems will be complemented by examples taken from the front matter of other
single-author poetry collections published from 1639 to 1651.
Poems Divine, and Humane, published posthumously in 1641, was Thomas Beedome’s first,
and only, collection of poetry. It was printed by the unidentified “E. P.” for Iohn Sweeting, who
was active from 1639 to 1657, but was not otherwise associated with the publication of poetry.3
The title of Beedome’s collection does not reflect the organisation of the poems; instead, like in
Thomas Herrick’s Hesperides (1648), whose subtitle used the same words in reverse order,4 the
“humane” poems precede the “divine” ones and also occupy more space. The collection starts
with the narrative poem “The Jealous Lover, or, The Constant Maid”, introduced by a separate
title page. The poem, which takes up twenty-three pages, is written in Venus and Adonis stanzas
and refers to Shakespeare also on the level of content, for instance by including lines from Venus
and Adonis.5 After the narrative poem, a new title (though no separate title page) announces
“POEMS” (18 pages); followed by “EPITAPHS” (13 pages) and “EPIGRAMS” (17 pages); taken
together, these constitute the “humane” poems. The final section of Beedome’s book, which
3 The ESTC lists nine entries for Iohn Sweeting, publications which range from broadside pamphlets to
miscellanea.
4 The full title of Herrick’s collection of poetry is Hesperides: Or, The Works both Humane & Divine of Robert
Herrick Esq. See Tom T. Cain and Ruth Connolly’s introduction to The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick
(2013), where they argue that the “descriptive combination ‘Humane & Divine’ is unique, though the same
words had been used in reverse in Thomas Beedome’s posthumously published Poems Divine and Humane
(1641).” They see a possible connection between the two publications, since “Henry Glapthorne, who organized
Beedome’s publication, moved in the same circles as Herrick (see ODNB), and Beedome, like Herrick was well
represented in Bold’s Wit a Sporting of 1657 […].” (lxxv) “Divine” as a descriptive element in the titles of
poetry collections had of course been used before Beedome’s poems were published, see e.g. Seuen Poems:
Divine, Morall, and Satyricall by Nathanael Richards (1631), Francis Quarles’ Divine Poems (1633) or A
Paraphrase Upon the Divine Poems (1638) by George Sandys. “Poems Divine and Humane” was later re-used
as the subtitle for Patrick Ker’s Flosculum Poeticum (1684).
5 See Eric F. Langley, who claims that Beedome repeats “Shakespeare’s lines [Narcissus so himself himself
forsook, / Who died to kiss his shadow in the brook] word for word” (34). Actually, the second line is slightly
changed in Beedome’s poem; it runs “And dy’d to see his shadow in a brooke” (C1v).

4
includes the “divine” poems (19 pages), is introduced by a change in the running title (from
“Epigrams” to “Poems”) and, of course, a change of topic. The divine poems include meditations
on life, god and death “obviously modelled on [George Herbert’s] The Temple” (Ellrodt 202).6
Beedome’s “humane” poems are replete with conceits (both in the Petrarchan and
metaphysical vein), Neo-Platonist ideas, and images borrowed from alchemy. They include
poems of seduction, friendship poems and poems addressed to fellow poets such as Henry
Wotton and George Wither. Francis Meynell (iv) is probably correct that the title of the poem “To
the memory of his honoured friend Master John Donne, an Eversary [Anniversary]” is misleading,
since the elegy deals with the death of a young man, and not with the poet who was almost sixty
when he died in 1631: “For if long age can be counted but a span, / Thy inch of time scarce
measur’d halfe a man.” (G7v) So contrary to Shaver’s claim that Beedome is worth remembering
because he counted John Donne among his “honoured friends” (412), it is more likely that
Beedome was not personally acquainted with the older poet. In “To the excellent Poets [sic] Mr
George Wither” Beedome admits that he does not know Wither in person either, but explains
how he was hugely influenced by the experience of reading Wither’s work; he describes how he
first encountered his works when he was sixteen and then “Made hast to purchase” Wither’s
satirical work immediately afterwards (Gv, ll. 13-14). There is no evidence in the collection of
poetry that Beedome was personally acquainted with any of the poets or playwrights of his time
apart from Henry Glapthorne, Thomas Nabbes and “Ed. May” (who contributed the first
commendatory poem and could be identical with the Edward May who published Epigrams
Divine and Morall in 1633), but he was obviously well-read and entered into dialogues with his
literary forebears and contemporaries by imitating their style, reacting to specific earlier poems,
or listing the poets’ qualities in his own poetry. In “Encomium Poetarum ad fratrem Galiel Scot.”
Beedome expresses his admiration for Daniel, Spenser, Jonson, Drayton, and Harrington and
presents their work as immortal, before, towards the end of the poem, he voices the wish that
also his work may live on once he is dead:
Now faints my pen, and, fainting, feares that I
My selfe may perish, if with clemencie,
My reader censure not, yet hopes to raise
A memory to it selfe, though not of praise;
That I being earth, something may live of mee
Perhaps this paper if approv’d of thee. (F5v, ll. 105-10)
Apart from praising the earlier poets’ accomplishments, Beedome outlines the
performative power of poetry as such: it does not only have the ability to immortalise the
ancient and modern poets, but also to influence politics, win women, charm the audience in
general and to commit slander. Moving in his argument from the power of poetry to the power
of the poet (“Thus Poets like fates factors here do hold / All power underneath their pens
controld” (F5v, ll. 97-98), which leads him to a discussion of the modern poets before he finishes
the poem with the lines quoted above, Beedome establishes his own position as a poet as one of
power. He thus attempts to inscribe himself into poetic traditions and fashions himself as a poet
for his audience.
6 See also C. A. Patrides, who argues that three of Beedome’s poems “echo Herbert’s mode of articulation” (5);
Edward B. Reed is more specific in citing Beedome’s poems “Meditation” and “The Mercy Seat” as imitations
of Herbert in a discussion of the popularity of Herbert’s The Temple (287).

5
Little is known about Beedome’s life. He died in 1640 or 1641; according to Shaver’s
research, he “cannot have been more than twenty-eight years old” at the time of his death (413)
and the commendatory poems all present him as a young man who died before his time. From
the title page of the poetry collection it can be concluded that he was probably not of noble
descent since his name is given without any title. No university affiliation is provided. As far as
his poetical output is concerned, Beedome had contributed one of the seventeen commendatory
poems to the merchant Lewes Roberts’ The Merchants Mappe of Commerce (1638) and another
one to Lychnocausia siue Moralia facum emblemata (1638) by Robert Farley (see Bullen and
Shaver) before his poetry was published, which indicates that he had some literary connections.
Moreover, the collection of his poetry was prefixed with twelve commendatory poems, which
testifies to a certain popularity since this was more than the average number of commendatory
verses at the time.
However, despite all the praise lavished on Beedome in these commendatory poems, his
Poems did not see a second edition, and he soon fell into oblivion (or was at least not considered
an important poet of his time in the second half of the seventeenth century) since he is
mentioned neither in Edward Phillips’ Teatrum Poetarum (1675) nor in William Winstanley’s
Lives of the most Famous English Poets (1687). He seems to have been rediscovered in the late
eighteenth century since he is included for example in Ellis’ Specimens of the Early English Poets
(1790), where the full text of Beedome’s “The Question and Answer” is printed, together with
the observation that his “posthumous poems contain many good lines, but [are] in general
wretchedly marred by extravagant conceits.” (268) In 1847, The Gentleman’s Magazine printed
three stanzas of “The Jealous Lover…” and six extracts from Beedome’s “humane” poems in a
“Retrospective Review” of Beedome’s volume, thus making a small portion of his work available
to a larger audience. Half-Hours with Our Sacred Poets, published in 1863, introduces two of
Beedome’s “divine” poems with the remark that Beedome’s fame is “at present […] probably as
near as zero as possible” and that it “was never universal” (203), but that it is the aim of the
collection to present “for the first time […] to the general reader “some names of poets who are
now not so much unpopular as lapsed from popularity” (iii). At the beginning of the twentieth
century Select Poems Divine and Humane were published. Edited by Francis Meynell in 1928, the
long narrative poem “The Jealous Lover, Or, the Constant Maid” and all of the front matter were
omitted. An edition of Beedome’s poetry with an Italian introduction followed in 1954. In
addition to that, several of Beedome’s poems have been collected in anthologies of seventeenth-
century poetry.7
There has been little critical interest in Beedome so far. Apart from a short article on the
poet by Chester L. Shaver (1938) there is no work dedicated exclusively to Beedome, but he is
mentioned in passing in studies on other topics and lines of his poetry are quoted in places.
Miller Christy includes the full text of Beedome’s poems “To the Heroicall Captaine THOMAS
JAMES, of his discovery made by the Northwest Passage towards the South Sea, 1631” and “To the
same Captaine on his Couragious and pious behaviour in the said voyage” as examples of a
“contemporary reference to James’s voyage” even though he believes that “they have no poetic
merit” (clxxxvi).8 Beedome is listed among the “forgotten poets of the period” (Marshall 40) in
7 For example, Grierson and Bullough included “The Broken Heart” in their Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century
(1934) which was replaced by “The Question and Answer” and “The Petition” in The New Oxford Book of
Seventeenth-Century Verse (1992); “The Present”, a religious poem, was included in Colin Burrow’s 2006
anthology of Metaphysical Poetry.
8 An extract from the former poem is later quoted in Wayne K. D. Davies’ Writing Geographical Exploration:
James and the Northwest Passage, 1631-33 (2003).

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an essay on the seventeenth-century poet William Lathum, and three lines of his poem on the
death of Gustavus Adolphus are quoted in “The English Revolution and the Brotherhood of Man”
by Christopher Hill (1954).
Shaver suggests that Thomas Beedome “will probably be remembered less for his poetry
than for his admirers and his admirations” (412), the admiration being expressed in the twelve
commendatory poems prefixed to Beedome’s Poems. Apart from these commendatory poems,
the front matter of Thomas Beedome’s Poems Divine, and Humane consists of a title page, a short
address “To the Reader” by Beedome’s friend the dramatist Henry Glapthorne (see Zwickert 6)
who acted as editor, a separate title page for “The Jealous Lover…” and a short address “To the
Reader” by Thomas Beedome himself following that title page, so Beedome was obviously
involved in the plans to publish his poetry. It does not contain a dedication to a (prospective)
patron; such dedications, however, were no longer an omnipresent feature of the front matter in
the 1640s (see Chandler 53). The front matter is thus largely composed of what Genette has
referred to as “allographic paratext”, i.e. material outside the text proper contributed by
someone else than the author him- or herself. Only Glapthorne, the playwright and poet Thomas
Nabbes and Beedome’s brother are clearly identified as commendatory poets, and the other
poems are signed only with initials.
The commendatory poems are presented as part of a monument to the author and display
features of a concerted effort.9 The first poem, “On the deceased Authour, Master Thomas
Beedom and his Poems” by Ed. May closes with the lines “I […] am sent / To bring this first stone
to his Monument” (A3v, ll. 47-8). Henry Glapthorne reveals the intended function of his verse at
the end of “On the death and Poems of his most deare friend, Master Thomas Beedome”: “This is
my vote, which to thy Booke shall be, / A just applause, to thee an Elegie” (A4v, ll. 41-2), and thus
emphasises his contribution to the joint effort to present Beedome’s work. “To his Friend the
Author, Master Thomas Beedom before his death, on these his Poem” by Em. D. presents an
anomaly, since, as the title indicates, it was written while the author was still alive, and serves as
further indication that Beedome had been involved in planning the publication of his poems: Em.
D. refers to the author’s “labour’d Booke” (A5v, l. 16) and speaks of Beedome in the present
tense. After downplaying his own contribution, H. P. suggests that the next edition of Beedome’s
poems will feature even more commendatory verses:
And with the next impression, this thin Booke,
I prophesie, shall like a Uolume looke.
Thickned with severall Poems in his praise,
That all his readers will adde to his bayes,
I come but to unload my heavie eye,
Vpon this spare blanke, in an Elegie. (A7v, ll. 7-12)
H. P. thus reflects on the convention of adding additional commendatory verses to new editions
of a book, and self-reflexively refers to his task of contributing to the front matter. R. W. refers to
the concerted effort of the front matter:
Where we thy friends, and I among the rest,
As a chiefe mourner, in the Ensignes drest
9 See Kiséry (47) for the popular conception of the work of an author as their monument in the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.

7
Of hearty sorrow, sadly seeke to pay,
This as a gratefull tribute, to thy bay,
Which being watred with our briny dew,
Shall still spring up more, flourishing and new. (A8v; ll. 21-26)
J. S., on the other hand, sets apart his efforts to commend Beedome, claiming that he does
not “hope (as others) to adorne / With my quaint lines thy Booke” (Br, ll. 13-14), “Their sole
ambition being to attend / Thee, with the true devotions of a friend.” (Bv, ll. 17-18) after having
stated in the first line of his poem that there are already “So many great names fixt before they
Booke”. Em. D. contributed a second poem, this time an “Elegie on the death of his ingenious
friend, the deserving Author, Master Thomas Beedome”, in which he explains that he originally
did not intend to write another piece for the publication of Beedome’s work (“Once I resolved a
silence, was content, / With the rare Fabricke of thy Monument”; B4v; ll. 1-2), but claims to have
heard a voice from Beedome’s grave which “in a Language full / Of incens’d anger vow[ed] to
disannull / All former friendship, if I should denie, / Mongst other friends to write thy Elegie;”
(B5r, ll. 19-22). “On the Poems of the Author, his deare Brother, Master Thomas Beedom
deceased”, written by Francis Beedome, completes the allographic paratext by addressing and
justifying the commendatory efforts in a direct address to the reader:
Then Reader know, we have not us'd our brains,
To usher in absurd, uncivill straines;
Such as might pale the Paper, blacke the Inke,
And cause the ghost of our dead friend to shrinke. (B6r, ll. 7-10)
The cross-references and self-reflexive statements referring to a concerted effort to present
Beedome indicate the care with which the edition – or at least the front matter – of Beedome’s
Poems was prepared.
The titles of six of the prefixed poems explicitly position Beedome as the author of the
book by referring to him as “autho(u)r”; as well, Thomas Beedome’s own address to the reader is
entitled “THE AUTHOR, to the READER”. The label “autho(u)r” is further repeated four times
within the poems. The use of the label “author” as part of the titles of the individual parts of the
front matter is not particular to Beedome’s Poems, it is found throughout the early seventeenth
century. The almost excessive use of the label, however, seems to have reached an apogee in the
decades between 1630 and 1650: In 1633, for example, the label is used six times in the two-
page address from “The Booke-seller to the Reader” prefixed to Robert Gomersall’s Poems,
which closes with the following sentence: “But I beginne to talke rather like a Maker, then a seller
of Bookes: I have nothing now more to adde, but this, love the Authour, and me for bringing you
acquainted.” (A3 v) All of the six commendatory poems in Matthew Stevenson’s Occasions Off-
spring or Poems on Severall Occasions (1645) bear “Author” (always capitalised) in their title; as
do six of the seven of those prefixed to Martin Lluelyn’s Men-Miracles with other Poems (1646).
In the seven-page section “To the Reader” prefixed to William Cartwright’s Comedies, Tragi-
Comedies, With other Poems (1651), the label “author” is used fifteen times, set apart
typographically by Roman print and capitalisation.
The poets’ authorship is thus established and confirmed by the repetition of the label
“author”. Drawing on Berensmeyer, Buelens and Demoor’s concept of authorship as
performance (2012), one could grasp these – mostly allographic – labelling efforts as acts of
performing authorship. The writers whose work is introduced and praised are made into

8
authors by editors, fellow poets, friends or family members in the context of publishing their
work because they are referred to as such. However, while these efforts testify to the desirability
of being – and being perceived as – an author, it is evident that the label “author” alone does not
have discriminative value. It is used generically for everyone who has written, and published,
work of any kind, regardless of the perceived quality of that work. This becomes especially clear
from W. C.’s poem: new authors can appear on the book market every day; it does not take much
to become an author. Since the label “author” alone carries neither positive nor negative
overtones, the author whose work is recommended and introduced to the reader needs to be
distinguished from the mass of other authors by other means.
In the front matter of Beedome’s Poems, this happens in the first place by qualifying the
label “author” when it refers to Beedome: Beedome becomes “the deserving Author” in Nabbes’
and Em. D.’s poems. Further, Beedome’s name is repeated frequently – his name, with the
variant spellings “Beedome” and “Beedom”, is part of all the titles of the commendatory verses
and is repeated as often as twelve times within the poems.10 With the help of this strategy the
reader, who might have been unfamiliar with the author when first picking up the book, is
reminded persistently of the author’s name; the name of the author becomes, furthermore,
closely connected with the “poems” in the course of the front matter.
In a successive step Beedome is thus referred to as “poet”, not just “author”, both directly
and by association of his name with “his poetry”. Em. D. even calls him “Poet Laureate” (A6r l.
22). In contrast to many other examples of early modern front matter, no explicit endeavours
are undertaken to define either poetry in general or the features of the ideal poet; the labels are
used without much further definition. Rudimentarily, Beedome as a poet is distinguished from
other authors with the help of a description of his stylistic qualities and by reference to his
works. In his address to the reader, Henry Glapthorne explicitly, though not very specifically,
affirms that Beedome’s “works are as excellent, as singular” (A2r). In “On the deceased Authour,
Master Thomas Beedom, and his Poems” Ed. May outlines some qualities of his poetry (“The
sweet / And gentle cadence of [his verses’] ordered feet”; ll. 5-6) and even names one specific
work, namely “The Jealous Lover, Or, the Constant Maid” (l. 16), which, although he does not
discuss the narrative poem in any detail, at least shows that May had some knowledge of
Beedome’s work and did not just reiterate staple conventions of commendatory verse The poet’s
good qualities are also defined ex negativo, by juxtaposing the often vague praise of Beedome’s
work with that of the “illiterate” “Scullers” and plough-men whose attempts to write poetry
result in “empty nothings” (Em. D. A5v; ll. 7, 2, 14) or by associating Beedome with well-known
earlier poets. In “To the Memorie of his friend, Master Thomas Beedom. And upon his Poems” H.
P. attempts to inscribe Beedome into a tradition of established English poets; their names serve
as shorthand for their qualities, which are implicitly transferred to Beedome:
[…] Tell yee he's gone, whose muses early flight,
Gave hopes to th' world, we nere should see a night
Of Poetry, that th' Widdow of those rare men,
Spencer, and Drayton, admir'd Donne, great Ben,
Should now remarried be, but see th' ill lucke,
When just the match was made, of the rude plucke!
Death snatch'd him hence, left Poetry, and us, […]. (A7v, ll. 15-20)
10 See also Chandler’s chapter on Shakespeare for the repetition of proper names in commendatory poetry.

9
The strategy of characterising an author by way of association or comparison with
established English writers was a popular one for presenting and advertising poets: Crashaw in
1646, for instance, is presented as second only to George Herbert (“The Preface to the Reader”;
A3v) and he is even elevated above “Homer, Virgil, Horace” (A4r). The favourable comparison
with classic writers was another popular variety of this strategy, employed as well for example
in the front matter of Francis Beaumont’s Poems (1640), where it is claimed that Ovid “No more
shalbe admir’d at: for these times / Produce a Poet whose more rare invention, / Will teare the love
sick Mirtle from his browes, / T’ adorn his temple with deserved boughes.” (“To the Author” by J. F.;
A3r ll. 7-12) These attempts to present the author, which further qualify and define the label
“poet”, are of course conventionalised commonplaces and thus their power to individualise the
authors may seem limited. However, the act of comparison as such bears performative value for
the construction of individual authorship, and the authors’ achievements and qualities are
evaluated with references, however vague or far-fetched, to their work. The close connection
between the authors and their work is thus affirmed in these acts of comparison and evaluation.
The individualising impulse is maintained in the comparison of Beedome with ‘unworthy
authors’, those who constitute the mass of new authors. These authors are not named, which
emphasises that they are not perceived as authors of any distinction by the writers of the
commendatory verse and further serves to single out and particularise the named author
Beedome. The mass of unnamed authors, who are only labelled generically in the front matter of
Beedome’s Poems as “new Authors” or by reference to their original professions – foot-boys,
scullers, plough-men – is placed in direct opposition to the praiseworthy author Thomas
Beedome whose “fancy [is]rich, as was his mind” (W. C., l. 12), though W. C. complains that a
distinction between the two is not always easy: this “age […] ‘twill scarce admit, / Distinction
betweene ignorance and wit” (ll. 1-2) since “Each weares the others habit, neither’s knowne / By
the wanted proper dresses that was its owne” (l. 3).
The unfavourable depiction of the other authors is often accomplished with the help of
derogatory labels: one of them is “scribler”. The idea of the scribbler is repeatedly employed in
order to distinguish worthless authors from “real poets” in early modern front matter to poetry
collections. In a dedicatory poem prefixed to Francis Beaumont’s Poems (1640), e.g., Laurence
Blaikelocke contrasts Beaumont’s work with “worthlesse Poems or light Rimes / Writ by some
common scribler of the times” (A2r; ll.1-2). The label “rimer” is also sometimes used in a
derogatory fashion (e.g. in a commendatory poem prefixed to Mill’s A Night’s Search, 1640:
“Some loose-lin’d Rimers by lascivious Layes, / Infect the Aire; thou justly bear’st the Bayes, […].”;
B5r, ll.1-2).
What is conspicuous, however, is that the label “writer” is not applied, neither in the front
matter of Beedome's Poems nor in the other examples examined in this essay. This can be
explained by the fact that, according to the OED, “writer” used to denote someone who wrote
professionally. Leon. Digges, in his commendatory poem prefixed to Shakespeare’s Poems (1640)
uses the label “writer”; but he uses it derogatorily when he speaks of “upstart writers” in the
proximity of “needy Poetasters” (*3v; ll. 27-28), whom he only grants the right to publish and
perform their works to keep them from starving. “Writer” is thus associated with a professional
activity undertaken with the aim of earning money. Beedome is presented as a good or worthy
poet because he is not one of those who write for money only, he does not “Rime […] for life-
preserving pay”. According to Andrew Bennett, “the attempt to earn either wealth or position
from publication was seen as both an unnecessary and a disreputable degradation of one’s
aristocratic status, or one’s aspirations to such status.” (47) Thomas Nabbes, who also
contributed a commendatory poem to Beedome’s volume, contrasts Thomas Jordan’s

10
achievements decidedly from those of the “poetasters” who are only interested in earning
money with their verses:
Some Poetasters of the times,
That dabble in the Lake of Rhimes;
Care not, so they be in Print
What sordid trash or stuffe is in’t.
There are too many such I feare
That make Bookes cheape and Paper deare.
(“To Mr. Thomas Jordan on his Fancies”, n.pg., ll. 7-12)
Like W. C. who disdains those authors who “Rime onely for some life-preserving pay” (l. 8),
Nabbes strives to present the author whose work he commends in stark opposition to such
abominable people, and calls Jordan “Poesie’s true sonne” (l. 13), whose worth is balanced not in
money but the moral accomplishment of his elaborate poetic creation.
John Feather argues that “despite the contempt in which those who wrote for money were
held by their more fortunate contemporaries, authorship was a recognisable occupation by the
end of the sixteenth century.” However, “[a]t least another century was to elapse before the
professional author could take some pride in his profession […].” (27) The publication of
Beedome’s Poems comes at a point at which authorship as profession was not yet fully accepted,
but nevertheless practiced by many: the reference to the new authors who try to make their way
every day suggests that there was a flourishing market for poetry books, but it is expressed that
earning money was not deemed respectable. Pretending that one was not interested in the
commercial side of publishing was a common topos; as Saenger points out, “[c]haracterizations
of the author as dignified, reluctant, original, or indignant are […] all topoi of the publishing
trade. These topoi all fit with the larger fiction of noncommerciality […].” (32) These “fictions of
noncommerciality” often go hand in hand with (fake) protestations that publication was
undertaken against the will of the author.
This is not the case in Beedome’s volume of poetry. Though, like in many of the other texts
discussed above, writing poetry and publishing it only for the sake of money is decidedly
presented as undesirable, publishing as such is not viewed as harmful. The advantages of
publishing the poet’s work in book form are not denied: the ability of the printed book to
maintain the poet’s memory is emphasised throughout the front matter of Beedome’s Poems.
The entire paragraph addressed “To the Reader” presents the book at hand as “a loving
Monument to [the poet's] worth”, which “can never convert to ashes” (A2); “Bookes” are
referred to as “pictures of mens lives delineated”; and referring to Beedome Glapthorne says
that “he shall live in Paper, which shall make him live in’s Marble”. The memorialising and
immortalising function of books dates back to antiquity11 and the topos that “works have to
assume a material form to transcend their creator […] was acknowledged by many in the period”
(Kiséry 47). However, here the book as a product of print is hailed as an apt means of keeping
the poet’s memory alive.
Beedome himself, in his address to the reader, presents the fact that his work can now be
accessed in print as welcome; referring to what his Muse has produced he says, “Which though it
11 See for example the epilogue of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “Now stands my task accomplished, such a work / As
not the wrath of Jove, nor fire nor sword / Nor the devouring ages can destroy. […] / If truth at all / Is established
by poetic prophecy, / My fame shall live to all eternity.” (379)

11
be but meane (as tis confest) / T' hath ventured hard to please thee, since tis prest.” (B8v, ll. 7-8)
The repeated references to the material qualities of the printed book and its capacity to preserve
the author’s work for posterity voiced in the front matter suggest that lyric poetry published in
book form no longer had the ephemeral status it used to have in the early days of poetry
publishing (see Marotti1995; 227). The emphasis on the book as a printed object further
undermines the fiction of noncommerciality, since it emphasises the “book’s heightened capacity
as a commodity engendered by the introduction of printing” (Shevlin 49).
Throughout the front matter, a close connection is established between the author and his
book, as in the following poem, where it is emphasised that the reader can trace in the book
something that is Beedome’s “own”, something that belongs to him:
Till in thy Booke, thy blest memorial bee,
As is thy soule, fraught with eternitie.
And Beedom, shall survive in it with glory,
It being his owne accomplisht perfect story.
(from “On the Poems of his worthy friend, Master Thomas Beedome, the lately
deceased Author” by R.W., A8v; ll. 27-30)
The proprietary relationship, signalled for example by the use of possessive pronouns in the
titles of the commendatory poems (“On the deceased Authour, Master Thomas Beedom, and his
Poems”; “To his Friend the Author, Master Thomas Beedom before his death, on these his Poems”
etc. [my emphasis]), is supported by the repeated statement that the book introduced by the
commendatory poems is Beedome’s. Though the meanings of “book” as material object and
“book” as metonymically referring to the author’s lyrical output are conflated, the basic idea of a
proprietary relationship between the author and his work is expressed..
The repeated assertion that the poems in Beedome’s collection are really his own further
serves to forestall possible charges of plagiarism. While imitation was an accepted mode of
composition provided that it was not accomplished in a servile fashion, it was distinguished
from “outright piracy”, from stealing someone else’s work, in discussions of plays, poetry and
other writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century (White 135). The commendatory
verses prefixed to Beedome’s Poems assert that the poet has written the poems himself, and the
presentation of Beedome as the original author serves as yet another mark of distinction12 in a
time when passing off the works of others as one’s own was not an uncommon practice, as is
illustrated for example by the closing lines of “On Mr William Cartwright’s excellent Poems” by
Joseph Howe prefixed to Cartwright’s Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, With other Poems (1651),
published eight years after Cartwright’s death:13
And now we Writers too, that think
We sprinkle Balme instead of Inke
On his lov’d Memory, doe curse
The Printers that have made us worse
Poets than Mourners, whose sly drift
12 The presentation of Beedome as the original author of his work is, however, not entirely accurate if we
consider his own unacknowledged repetition of lines from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis in “The Jealous
Lover”.
13 For further examples see Hayden White 187f.

12
Is, thus to rob us of our Theft;
For He unpublish’d did allow
Safe Wit t’all Takers, and We now
Like Pirats praysing Plate-Fleets, deal,
Sadly commend what we would steal. (n. pg.; ll. 71-80)
Howe’s lines emphasise the role of print-publishing in strengthening the proprietary
connection between author and work; however, even though Beedome’s work was print-
published with his name on the title page and he was clearly presented as the author of the work
to follow, about thirty pages of his poems were passed off as Henry Bold’s in VVit a sporting in a
pleasant grove of new fancies (1657) without any acknowledgment of the original author (see
Bullen). Even such a rather personal title as “Loves Apostacy to his friend M. E. D.” is kept in the
collection published under Bold’s name without any change (C2v), while the information that
the poem starting “Follow a shadow, it flies you” was written “Per Ben. Johnson” is omitted from
Bold’s volume.
Em. D., who emphasises that Beedome’s poems were written by himself, connects this
feature with their prospective favourable reception: “For he that scans the Poems that are thine,
/ Must call them raptures, sacred, and divine.” (A6r; ll.17-18) One of the commendatory poems
prefixed to Humphrey Mill’s Poems Occasioned by a Melancholy Vision (1639) serves as another
example: “Goe now with praise, feare not to finde sucesse, / Whats here’s thine own, thou hast
not rob’d the press.” (“Of the Poems of his Friend” by P. H.; A5v, ll. 21-22) In Mill, this emphasis
on the proprietary relationship between author and work is combined with a command not to
fear publication and future criticism, so that publication of one’s poems is once more presented
as desirable. This idea is also expressed in the poem “To his Friend, H. M.” by I. A. in the same
collection of poetry, which closes with an echo of popular Horatian lines, “Let not thy conquest
die, let’s know the thing, / Sally forth little booke, feare no deadly sting.” (A6r; ll. 11-12)14
The front matter of Beedome’s Poems is not exceptional. The strategies and labelling
efforts used in the attempts to particularise the author are commonly found in mid-seventeenth
century front matter. However, the front matter of Beedome’s Poems embodies the anxiety of the
time that one specific author will drown in a sea of ever-new authors, which simultaneously
expresses that authorship as such was perceived to have become a mass phenomenon and
motivates the need for presenting the author in question as special. The label “author”, unlike
the labels “poet” or “scribler”, does not carry positive or negative connotations in the front
matter examined here and has to be further qualified and complemented in order to distinguish
the writer in question. It is specifically employed, however, to signal a proprietary relationship
between the writer and his or her work, irrespective of the quality of that work, so even though
there were as yet no copyright regulations in seventeenth-century England, a concept of the
author as the intellectual proprietor of his or her work was already being expressed.
14 For further uses of the Horatian line from Epistles Book I see e.g. Chaucer, Troilus & Criseyde, stanza 256;
George Cavendish’s “Thauctor to / hys boke” in Metrical Visions or Spenser’s “To his Booke” prefixed to The
Shepheardes Calender.

13
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