University of Virginia Library

In a magisterial prolegomenon (1961) to his edition of Volume I of Fielding's Miscellanies (1972), Henry Knight Miller carefully discussed and illustrated the list of subscribers, which then, curiously enough, he never printed in his edition.[1] He never explained this decision—nor the omission of some other features of his copy-text, such as divisional title pages—and probably saw no need to do so, for such edition-specific features, like illustrations, imprints, dust-jackets or advertisements, were not then regarded as part of the work for which the editor was responsible. In that bygone age, when self-referentiality was the peculiar (but excellent) privilege of literary language, documents like subscription lists seemed extra-literary and even extra-textual—part of the "background" of the work, no doubt, but operating by different rules and subject to different disciplines. Whatever else subscription lists may have been, they were not verbal icons or well-wrought urns, and certainly no reviewer questioned Miller's decision, if one pondered the matter at all.

Now, thirty-three years later, Bertrand Goldgar and I are continuing Miller's edition in a very different scholarly climate. The Project for Historical Bio-Bibliography at Newcastle has greatly stimulated interest in subscription publishing,[2] and Bibliography itself has slouched toward a History

of the Book, in which all the physical features of the editor's sources take on heightened significance. Our sense of textuality, moreover, has broadened— some would say, blurred, but to particularize the rocks, human bodies, street signs, and other objects that are now acceptable literary texts would be invidious. Suffice it to say, that the inclusion of Fielding's list in our edition should be theoretically unobjectionable, though in practice I can no longer print it where it belongs, at the head of Volume I.

This deferment of the list in no way affects its value as a document, but transforms and disguises its textuality. Fielding, unusually, set his list at the traditional site of dedications, invocations, and proems. Here, at a green oak by the edge of the sea, on a golden chain, says Pushkin, a learned cat walks to and fro. Half in, half out of the work, simultaneously authors, characters and readers, the muses, noblemen and cats that inhabit this place ambiguously recommend both its truth and its fiction. Matthew Hodgart compares the "haughty territorial magnates" among Pope's subscribers to the Homeric heroes in the Catalogue of Ships.[3] Though many of these heroes never reappear in the Iliad, they continued to haunt the imagination of the audience, providing a grip for their paesani, or semblables, to appropriate the text. I call them "virtual readers" in the rather esoteric sense that the electronic simulation of experience through VCRs and electromechanical gloves is known as "virtual reality." Depending on the reality, of course, the difference may be small or great: virtual sex, for example, may be indistinguishable from the real thing, whereas virtual representation is a poor substitute for direct elections. When we have assessed the adequacy of the list as an account of Fielding's actual readers, we can better appreciate its virtues.