Seventeenth-century crowd funding
October 22, 2013 12:10 PM Subscribe
Taylor was a waterman who first entered the book trade in 1612 with a collection of verses. From that point on he kept up a prolific stream of publications, including in 1618 an account of a journey on foot to Scotland published as The Pennyles Pilgrimage. In the previous year Taylor has published a similar account of his journey to Hamburg, but this book had two twists. The first was that Taylor had set himself the challenge of completing his journey without begging and relying on spontaneous offers of hospitality. The second was that Taylor tried to fund it through subscriptions.
No mention of Prenumeranten (פרענומעראנטען)? Jews have been crowdfunding their books for a long time...
posted by Asparagirl at 2:37 PM on October 22, 2013
posted by Asparagirl at 2:37 PM on October 22, 2013
By MetaFilter's own greycap.
I was just looking at the front page and thought "hey, that seems familiar"...
I am so glad when other people discover John Taylor. He is one of the most fascinating characters of seventeenth century England. He started his career as a waterman - the equivalent of a cab driver - ferrying passengers across the Thames, and seems to have met lots of actors and writers as a result (London's theatres were all south of the river at this point). Somehow he managed to spin these connections into a writing career. At some point he was also in the Elizabethan navy and got shipwrecked on an island before being rescued. Later in life he sailed down the Thames in a boat made of brown paper, kept afloat by inflated pigs' bladders. The tradition of the English eccentric goes back a long way.
While his written work is not that sophisticated, it is fun, and that's what makes him important. For example he wrote one of the first palindromes - "Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel", from 1614, and he regularly slung mud at his literary opponents. The picture of him on the post linked to here was one the counter-attacks that his pamphlets prompted, and gives you some idea of the levels to which they descended. He contributed a lot to the development of short (8 page) satirical and acerbic pamphlets that by the 1640s were a major product of the London press, and which played a significant role in undermining the authority of king and parliament. Taylor would have been perfectly at home in today's world of social media and blogs: he'd have found all sorts of innovative uses for Twitter and Kickstarter.
By the 1650s Taylor was running a pub in Covent Garden, and I like to think of him there in his final years telling regulars about his adventures in the navy, about the famous people he'd ferried across the Thames ("you'll never guess who I had in the back of my cab"), and about his adventures travelling across England. If you want to find out more then there are a few other posts on my blog, but Bernard Capp's biography is the definitive account of his life.
posted by greycap at 3:50 PM on October 22, 2013 [4 favorites]
I was just looking at the front page and thought "hey, that seems familiar"...
I am so glad when other people discover John Taylor. He is one of the most fascinating characters of seventeenth century England. He started his career as a waterman - the equivalent of a cab driver - ferrying passengers across the Thames, and seems to have met lots of actors and writers as a result (London's theatres were all south of the river at this point). Somehow he managed to spin these connections into a writing career. At some point he was also in the Elizabethan navy and got shipwrecked on an island before being rescued. Later in life he sailed down the Thames in a boat made of brown paper, kept afloat by inflated pigs' bladders. The tradition of the English eccentric goes back a long way.
While his written work is not that sophisticated, it is fun, and that's what makes him important. For example he wrote one of the first palindromes - "Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel", from 1614, and he regularly slung mud at his literary opponents. The picture of him on the post linked to here was one the counter-attacks that his pamphlets prompted, and gives you some idea of the levels to which they descended. He contributed a lot to the development of short (8 page) satirical and acerbic pamphlets that by the 1640s were a major product of the London press, and which played a significant role in undermining the authority of king and parliament. Taylor would have been perfectly at home in today's world of social media and blogs: he'd have found all sorts of innovative uses for Twitter and Kickstarter.
By the 1650s Taylor was running a pub in Covent Garden, and I like to think of him there in his final years telling regulars about his adventures in the navy, about the famous people he'd ferried across the Thames ("you'll never guess who I had in the back of my cab"), and about his adventures travelling across England. If you want to find out more then there are a few other posts on my blog, but Bernard Capp's biography is the definitive account of his life.
posted by greycap at 3:50 PM on October 22, 2013 [4 favorites]
Subscription selling was commonplace back in the day. Thumb through any number of original volumes and you will find lists of those who had been good enough to put up their share.
Interesting post, however
posted by IndigoJones at 7:26 AM on October 23, 2013
Interesting post, however
posted by IndigoJones at 7:26 AM on October 23, 2013
Taylor's two palindromes were the first in English. The other, much less known one, from the same piece of flattery to the Queen, was "Deem if I meed."
Bizarrely, it was hundreds of years (well into the 19th century) before anyone published another. They're not that hard to write. All during this time people were slinging around various palindromes in Latin, Greek, Spanish and French, so it's not like they weren't interested.
posted by msalt at 11:02 AM on October 23, 2013
Bizarrely, it was hundreds of years (well into the 19th century) before anyone published another. They're not that hard to write. All during this time people were slinging around various palindromes in Latin, Greek, Spanish and French, so it's not like they weren't interested.
posted by msalt at 11:02 AM on October 23, 2013
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posted by Abiezer at 1:14 PM on October 22, 2013