Examining new research, this excellent volume presents a series of case-studies exemplifying the new newspaper history. Using cross-cultural comparisons, Joad Raymond establishes an agenda for answering crucial questions central to the future histories of the political and literary culture of early-modern Britain: * What is the relationship between the circulation of news in Britain and communication networks elsewhere in Europe? * Was the British development of the media unique? * What are the specific rhetorical properties of news-communication in seventeeth-century Britain? * What was the relationship between commerce and politics? * How do local exchanges of news relate to national practices and institutions? Previously published as a special issue of the journal Media History, this book is compulsory reading for researchers and students of European history and media studies alike.

This volume follows the beginnings and development of seventeenth-century English periodical print news and sees how contemporary news writers shaped their news discourse over the decades. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the volume analyses the different strategies employed by news writers of the day as they determined how best to present and write up both foreign and domestic events for a news-obsessed English readership. In his examination of the language used in corantos, newsbooks and gazettes—the first forms of periodical news in the English press—Nicholas Brownlees provides innovative analyses regarding a rich variety of topics including: the role of translation in early periodical news; the language of hard news in corantos and news pamphlets; forms and styles of epistolary news; fluctuating editorial strategies used to address and involve the reader; text structure and prototypical headlines; English news discourse within a wider European news context; the language of propaganda in the English Civil War; periodicity and the reporting of the Tuscan crisis in 1653; the language of ‘Advertisements’ in The London Gazette; the changing fortunes and semantics of News, Intelligence and Advice. In its focus on how news writers worked and experimented with seventeenth-century English language structures and discourse conventions to forge a style of news rhetoric that could inform, persuade and even entertain, this volume is essential reading for all historians, news analysts and historical linguists working in the early modern period.

In News Networks 35 scholars from 10 countries give a new account of the history of European news, emphasising its transnational character and the international transmission of forms and modes of news as well as information.

Winner of the 2019 Menno Hertzberger Encouragement Prize for Book History and Bibliography In Dutch and Flemish Newspapers of the Seventeenth Century Arthur der Weduwen presents the first comprehensive account of the early newspaper in the Low Countries. Composed of two volumes, this survey provides detailed introductions and bibliographical descriptions of 49 newspapers, surviving in over 16,000 issues in 84 archives and libraries. This work presents a crucial overview of the first fledgling century of newspaper publishing and reading in one of the most advanced political cultures of early modern Europe. Seventy years after Folke Dahl’s Dutch Corantos first documented early Dutch newspapers, Der Weduwen offers a brand-new approach to the bibliography of the early modern periodical press. This includes, amongst others, a description of places of correspondence listed in each surviving newspaper. The bibliography is accompanied by an extensive introduction of the Dutch and Flemish press in the seventeenth century. What emerges is a picture of a highly competitive and dynamic market for news, in which innovative publishers constantly adapt to the changing tastes of customers and pressures from authorities at home and abroad.

This book examines the relationship between Britain and Ireland, specifically the central role played by print and broadcast media in communicating political, cultural, and social differences and similarities between the two islands. The relationship between Ireland and Great Britain has a long and complex history. Given their geographical proximity and shared language one key dimension of this relationship has been the communication media – print and electronic – that have mediated this relationship. This book addresses this important, but relatively neglected, topic at a critical time in Anglo-Irish relations. Taking the long view, as well as looking in detail at specific episodes, the contributors map British-Irish interactions in print and broadcast media. This volume assesses the proprietorial and journalistic connections between various media institutions, the conditions under which media organisations operated and distribution channels employed. It considers media influences in terms of the role of media organs in constructing national identity and promoting social change. Furthermore, this book also considers news flows between the two islands, censorship in times of conflict, cross-border influences of television, and the relationship between cinema and television. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Media History.

The first major socio-cultural study of manuscript letters and letter-writing practices in early modern England. Daybell examines a crucial period in the development of the English vernacular letter before Charles I's postal reforms in 1635, one that witnessed a significant extension of letter-writing skills throughout society.

Helps scholars to examine historical press censorship in England. This title draws together around 500 texts, reaching across 140 years from the rigours of the Elizabethan Star Chamber Decree to the publication of "Cato's Letters", which famously advanced principles of free speech.

Perhaps more than any other kind of book, manuscript miscellanies require a complex and ’material’ reading strategy. This collection of essays engages the renewed and expanding interest in early modern English miscellanies, anthologies, and other compilations. Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England models and refines the study of these complicated collections. Several of its contributors question and redefine the terms we use to describe miscellanies and anthologies. Two senior scholars correct the misidentification of a scribe and, in so doing, uncover evidence of a Catholic, probably Jesuit, priest and community in a trio of manuscripts. Additional contributors show compilers interpreting, attributing, and arranging texts, as well as passively accepting others’ editorial decisions. While manuscript verse miscellanies remain appropriately central to the collection, several essays also involve print and prose, ranging from letters to sermons and even political prophesies. Using extensive textual and bibliographical evidence, the collection offers stimulating new readings of literature, politics, and religion in the early modern period, and promises to make important interventions in academic studies of the history of the book.

Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy is a volume of essays investigating European tragedy in the seventeenth century, comparing Shakespeare, Vondel, Gryphius, Racine and several other vernacular tragedians, together with consideration of neo-Latin dramas by Jesuits and other playwrights. To what extent were similar themes, plots, structures and styles elaborated? How is difference as well as similarity to be accounted for? European drama is beginning to be considered outside of the singular vernacular frameworks in which it has been largely confined (as instanced in the conferences and volumes of essays held in the Universities of Munich and Berlin 2010-12), but up-to-date secondary material is sparse and difficult to obtain. This volume intends to help remedy that deficit by addressing the drama in a full political, religious, legal and social context, and by considering the plays as interventions in those contexts. Contributors are: Christian Biet, Jan Bloemendal, Helmer J. Helmers, Blair Hoxby, Sarah M. Knight, Tatiana Korneeva, Frans-Willem Korsten, Joel B. Lande, Russell J. Leo, Howard B. Norland, Kirill Ospovat, James A. Parente, Jr., Freya Sierhuis, Nienke Tjoelker and Emily Vasiliauskas.

This open access book draws on conceptual resources ranging from medieval scholasticism to postmodern theory to propose a new understanding of secular time and its mediation in nineteenth-century technological networks. Untethering the concept of secularity from questions of religion and belief, it offers an innovative rethinking of the history of secularisation that will appeal to students, scholars, and everyone interested in secularity, Victorian culture, the history of technology, and the temporalities of modernity. Stefan Fisher-Hyrem (PhD) is a historian and Senior Academic Librarian at the University of Agder, Norway.