The Introduction argues that the absence of any extensive study of the Sonnets’ afterlife has led to various critical misapprehensions. They have by no means always been admired or loved, but at the same time they have an extensive and unbroken reception history which precedes Edmond Malone’s reprinting of the Quarto in 1780. The Introduction explores the implications of Malone’s bipartite division into Sonnets for a Fair Youth and those for a Dark Lady, and argues that this has had a detrimental effect on modern understandings of the Sonnets, as well as alienating us from centuries of readers, poets and critics who did not hold to this division. Finally, the Introduction demonstrates how the ‘canon’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets has changed radically over four hundred years, encouraging us to consider the contingency of their reputation as individual lyrics.

Continuing with the theme of political implications, Chapter 7 looks at how emoji encode ideas about race and gender in contemporary society and how their design can be a contested site for discussion of issues around these topics. It also asks to what extent they represent different national or community cultures, whether there’s a Western bias despite their Asian origins and the implications this has for the way they work as a form of cross-cultural communication.