The Union book

While the Jacobean Union has received ample attenti on from historians, especially parliamentary historians, it has received little or no attention from historians of the book. Its history, therefore, remains very much one of disemb odied ideas. Print culture played a crucial role in the dissemination of pro-Union idea s in the early seventeenth century; indeed, print was a central agent in the transfer of the Pa rliamentary debates on the Union into the public sphere. As numerous annotated Union tracts a nd treatises attest—I have in mind printed tracts that contain signs of early modern r eaders—the Union book as a material object facilitated discourse on the Union. The Union book, I argue, provides a wonderful opportunity to theorize and historicize the heterog eneous consumption of print in the early modern period: it invites consideration of the form s of textual production (print and manuscript cultures), the various cultural sites fr om which discourse on the Union emerged and within which it was transmitted (court, parliam ent, civic functions, social/literary networks/coteries), and the role such literature pl ayed in shaping knowledge communities and communal identitie