This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.

Alastair Fowler presents a fascinating study of title-pages printed in England from the early modern period to the nineteenth century. He examines pictorial title-pages in the context of the History of the Book for the first time. The first part of The Mind of the Book explores the forerunner of the frontispiece in late antiquity; the use of frames and borders in title-pages; portraits; printers' devices; emblematic title-pages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially attending to explanatory verses and arcane features such as chronograms; title-pages as 'memory prompts'; and eighteenth and nineteenth-century title-pages, tracing 'the rejection of emblematic and symbolic features and the introduction of unadorned, unpictorial, title-pages'. The second part of the book presents illustrations of sixteen significant title-pages with commentaries, ranging from Chaucer's Works in 1532 through Bacon's Instauratio Magna in 1620, Dicken's The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1870, and arriving back at Chaucer with Edward Burnes-Jones's illustrated title-page for the Works of 1896.

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, books of travel and exploration were much more than simply the printed experiences of intrepid authors. They were works of both artistry and industry—products of the complex, and often contested, relationships between authors and editors, publishers and printers. These books captivated the reading public and played a vital role in creating new geographical truths. In an age of global wonder and of expanding empires, there was no publisher more renowned for its travel books than the House of John Murray. Drawing on detailed examination of the John Murray Archive of manuscripts, images, and the firm’s correspondence with its many authors—a list that included such illustrious explorers and scientists as Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell, and literary giants like Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott—Travels into Print considers how journeys of exploration became published accounts and how travelers sought to demonstrate the faithfulness of their written testimony and to secure their personal credibility. This fascinating study in historical geography and book history takes modern readers on a journey into the nature of exploration, the production of authority in published travel narratives, and the creation of geographical authorship—a journey bound together by the unifying force of a world-leading publisher.

The Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries aims at recording articles of scholarly value which relate to the history of the printed book, to the history of arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, and of the economic social and cultural environment, involved in its production, distribution, conservation and description.

A thorough account of newspaper and periodical press history in Britain and Ireland from 1800-1900Provides a comprehensive history of the British and Irish Press from 1800-1900, reflected upon in 60 substantive chapters and focused case studiesSets out to capture the cross-regional and transnational dimension of press history in nineteenth-century Britain and IrelandOffers unique and important reassessments of nineteenth-century British and Irish press and periodical media within social, cultural, technological, economic and historical contextsThis is a unique collection of essays examining nineteenth-century British and Irish newspaper and periodical history during a key period of change and development. It covers an important point of expansion in periodical and press history across the four nations of Great Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), concentrating on cross-border and transnational comparisons and contrasts in nineteenth-century print communication. Designed to provide readers with a clear understanding of the current state of research in the field, in addition to an extensive introduction, it includes forty newly commissioned chapters and case studies exploring a full range of press activity and press genres during this intense period of change. Along with keystone chapters on the economics of the press and periodicals, production processes, readership and distribution networks, and legal frameworks under which the press operated, the book examines a wide range of areas from religious, literary, political and medical press genres to analyses of overseas and migr press and emerging developments in children's and women's press.