ABSTRACT
Roger L’Estrange contributed 6,000,000 published words to Restoration culture and ‘to posterity’.1 It is fortunate that his bantering proposal to make a monopoly of the alphabet, forbidding the use of words he had already used to preclude opponents twisting his meaning, had no real prospect of implementation.2 The actual figure arrived at in compiling the following bibliography, to the nearest 10,000, was 5,900,000 words, comprising 3,600,000 of his ‘own words’,3 1,560,000 translated words and 730,000 words issued as editor of the Intelligencer and Newes.4 In terms of titles, L’Estrange bequeathed some 75 extant political books and pamphlets, two collected works, 13 translated works and 1,183 periodical issues. Multiple editions increase the figures to 150 books, pamphlets and collections, and 46 works of translation issued during his lifetime. These calculations inevitably remain provisional and approximate, dependent upon decisions about attribution, authorship, averages and more (How many words per page? Did L’Estrange write or regurgitate the Dissenter’s Sayings? Did he or his opponent ‘author’ Le Strange’s Sayings?). These considerations, along with L’Estrange’s frequent reworking of material and interventions even during the printing process, do indeed make his bibliography ‘a matter of great complexity’.5
