ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how Bernhard Varenius was edited varied enormously over time, and resulted in very different positionings of his work on a spectrum between cheap hackwork and revered classic. The way in which texts like Varenius were edited interacted with and impacted upon each component in the tripartite style of analysis revolving around authorship, production and reception which intellectual historians have taken over from the new history and sociology of the book and furthered the geographical inflection of these processes. Varenius has been assumed, implied or directly asserted to have been widely influential in his day, the suggestion being that Geographia Generalis was in the hands of all learned inquirers with an interest in geography. General assertions made by historians of geography about Varenius being a standard textbook if by that is meant a claim that it was unusually widely available or exceptionally profitable as a piece of intellectual property do not hold good in the English-speaking world.