miscellany

Miscellany refers to a collection of diverse items gathered together, typically without a single unifying theme. The word comes from Latin miscellaneus, meaning mixed, and English usage dates from the early modern period. A miscellany is thus defined by variety rather than by a focused subject.

In literature and publishing, a miscellany can include poems, prose, letters, essays, anecdotes, drawings, translations, and other material. Unlike a tightly themed anthology, a miscellany emphasizes assortment and chance juxtapositions, reflecting the compiler’s interests or the contents of a manuscript or archive. Historically, manuscript miscellanies were common in medieval and early modern Europe as a way to preserve a broad range of texts, notes, and curiosities; printed miscellanies later appeared both as informal collections and as publishers experimented with broader or looser thematic groupings.

Beyond books, the term describes any broad assortment of items or information, such as a folder of miscellaneous notes, a collection of odds and ends, or a catalog that does not fit a single category. In modern usage, miscellae or misc. can appear in library catalogs, archival descriptions, and everyday language to denote items that do not belong to a specific, labeled genre. The concept of miscellany highlights a longstanding impulse to gather varied knowledge and objects into a single, usable repository.