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[¶1.] Researching another topic in 1988, I stumbled across many books in the British Library featuring snippets of the texts I was seeking. Titled miscellanies, they bore several inviting features. As nonce versions of "fine" literature, they demonstrated the way packaging represents texts for different kinds of readers; as versions of chapbooks, they documented the cultural transmission of literature; and as bundles of literary choices, they promised to shed some light on the way literary hierarchies are shaped. This started me on a hunt for their forebears, during which I have received much help. For a fellowship in 1993-1994, I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, and for grants and fellowships I thank the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Newberry Library, the Mills Memorial Library, Trinity College, and the St. Anthony's Hall Foundation. My thanks go also to the members of the spring 1994 Eighteenth-Century Workshop at the University of Chicago. I am grateful to the editors of ELH and Eighteenth-Century Life for allowing me to use some material previously published in articles. For energetic encouragement, I am very grateful to J. Paul Hunter and Claude Rawson; my thanks go also to Thomas Bonnell, Richard B. Sher, George A. Starr, Kevin L. Cope, Jim May, Don Farren, Howard Weinbrot, Alden Gordon, Terry Belanger and the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, Margaret Doody, Tony Macro, Margaret J. M. Ezell, Claudia Johnson, Charlotte Stewart-Murphy, Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz, Linda McKinney, and the staff at Trinity College. Mary Murrell at Princeton University Press has been most helpful; the errors in this manuscript are my own. For a patience that passed understanding a long time ago, and for ceaseless humor, attention, and gentle suggestions, I give my great thanks to my husband, Mark Miller.