In 1450 very few English men or women were personally familiar with a book; by 1850, the great majority of people daily encountered books, magazines, or newspapers. This book explores the history of this fundamental transformation, from the arrival of the printing press to the coming of steam. James Raven presents a lively and original account of the English book trade and the printers, booksellers, and entrepreneurs who promoted its development. Viewing print and book culture through the lens of commerce, Raven offers a new interpretation of the genesis of literature and literary commerce in England. He draws on extensive archival sources to reconstruct the successes and failures of those involved in the book trade—a cast of heroes and heroines, villains, and rogues. And, through groundbreaking investigations of neglected aspects of book-trade history, Raven thoroughly revises our understanding of the massive popularization of the book and the dramatic expansion of its markets over the centuries.
Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England assesses the contribution of the business press and the publication of print to the economic transformation of England. The impact of non-book printing has been long neglected. A raft of jobbing work serviced commerce and finance while many more practical guides and more ephemeral pamphlets on trade and investment were read than the books that we now associate with the foundations of modern political economy. A pivotal change in the book trades, apparent from the late seventeenth century, was the increased separation of printers from bookseller-publishers, from the skilled artisan to the bookseller-financier who might have no prior training in the printing house but who took up the sale of publications as another commodity. This book examines the broader social relationship between publication and the practical conduct of trade; the book asks what it meant to be 'published' and how print, text and image related to the involvement of script. The age of Enlightenment was an age of astonishing commercial and financial transformation offering printers and the business press new market opportunities. Print helped to effect a business revolution. The reliability, reputation, regularity, authority and familiarity of print increased trust and confidence and changed attitudes and behaviours. New modes of publication and the wide-ranging products of printing houses had huge implications for the way lives were managed, regulated and recorded. JAMES RAVEN is Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge.
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