"Love the Authour"

Drawing on her concept of ‘paratextual life-writing’, Sarah Herbe examines more than 600 single-author poetry books published in England between 1563 and 1777. She shows that the paratext of these books constitutes a form of multi-perspective and multi-generic life-writing, that it presents a forum for critical discussions of the form and content of life-writing, and that paratextual life-writing forges a close connection between the author’s life and their work, which serves commercial as well as interpretive functions and is instrumental in establishing the person of the poet as prime source of interpretation in the early modern period. “Love the Authour” was awarded the “Helene-Richter Preis” for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach which combines detailed close-reading analyses and cultural contextualization.