The Printer as Author in Early Modern English Book History: John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art by William E. Engel (review)

Reviewed by: The Printer as Author in Early Modern English Book History: John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art by William E. Engel Grace Murray The Printer as Author in Early Modern English Book History: John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art. By William E. Engel. (Routledge Studies in Early Modern Authorship) London: Routledge. 2022. xii+220 pp. £96. ISBN 978–0–367–14588–0. In this engaging journey through the career of the sixteenth-century English printer John Day, William E. Engel makes the case for Day as an ingenious craftsman of Tudor cultural memory. As Engel's bibliography makes clear, Day has received no shortage of attention from book historians and scholars of religious thought, mostly in relation to his printing of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs in 1563 and 1570. Engel situates his book at 'the intersection of book history, authorship studies, and mnemonic criticism' (p. 8), but it is the influence of the latter field that distinguishes his analysis. Engel's study is firmly rooted in the Warburgian tradition, especially in Ernst Cassirer's understanding of myth and in the mnemonic framework of Frances A. Yates. The Introduction establishes a theoretical approach to memory informed by Richard Semon's 'mnemic energy', a model to examine 'the affective powers associated with tapping into the immemorial reservoir of mythical thought and ritual practices by means of mnemonically charged symbols and emblems' (p. 10). As the printer of several significant Protestant texts, Day created 'affectively powerful engrammic-generating mechanisms for readers and viewers to take in and take to heart the words—and especially the images—of others' (p. 11). Though the terminology is unwieldy at times (and fades away in later chapters), Engel's emphasis on mnemonic devices spotlights the minute design decisions through which Day shaped his audience's experience of his editions. The Printer as Author comprises five chronological chapters, each treating a [End Page 260] different project for Day's presses. Chapter 1 offers an overview of Day's supervisory activities in 'the bustling and far-from-tidy early modern English bookworld' (p. 32), and segues into a discussion of his motto ('Arise for it is Day') and printer's mark as memento mori in the Norwich physician William Cunningham's Cosmographical Glass (1559). Engel's analysis is at its best in showcasing Day's typographical and iconographical creativity, or the 'mental machinery' (p. 95) of his Protestant print. Chapter 2is perhaps the most compelling, tackling Day's Catechism (1553) and Metrical Psalms (1562), with the former's dialogic structure and the latter's ballad metre figured as 'mnemonic markers' (p. 94) solidified by the alternation of blackletter and italic type. Chapter 3 places Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563) and its woodcuts that 'function in ways startlingly reminiscent of religious icons' (p. 121) at the centre of the book, so that the much shorter Chapter 4, on Day's underwriting of Jan Van der Noot's emblem book A Theatre for Worldlings (1568), becomes something of a coda on Day's mastery of the 'memory images' (p. 146) that also structure the Book of Martyrs. Engel's final chapter turns to Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book (1569) as a supreme exemplar of Day's manipulation of word and image in service of the reform-minded reader. It benefits in e-book form from colour images of an elaborate presentation copy for the Queen, and effectively argues that Day's seven sequences of border illustrations act as a 'mnemonic itinerary' (p. 179) for Protestant life and death. A brief foray into the commonplace book devised by William Burch, who copied the illustrations from the Dance of Death sequence in 1590, poses a question about reader response to these mnemonic units that invites future critical exploration. The Conclusion argues that 'John Day made history in every sense of the phrase' (p. 209), which somewhat minimizes the collaborative practice within which Engel has otherwise consistently located Day's innovations. Nonetheless, at its most dynamic, The Printer as Author brings the creative hub of Day's printing house to life as a force for the authorization and reformation of...