Abstract: This introductory chapter locates the book's project in historical, critical, and methodological terms. It situates the history of Jonson's reception against those of his peers, surveys and reviews earlier scholarly work in the field, and argues for a mixed methodology that incorporates literary response to Jonson alongside a bibliographical or ‘history of the book’ understanding of his texts and their forms. Using the figure of Jonson's real or apparent marginality in the Romantic Age, the chapter argues that understanding Jonson in this period might be a way of thinking again about our ideas of the romantic itself.

Keywords: bibliographical, marginality, marginalia, annotation, Dryden, mechanic,