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.

The book trade historically tended to operate in a spirit of co-operation as well as competition. Networks between printers, publishers, booksellers and related trades existed at local, regional, national and international levels and were a vital part of the business of books for several centuries. This collection of essays examines many aspects of the history of book-trade networks, in response to the recent ‘spatial turn’ in history and other disciplines. Contributors come from various backgrounds including history, sociology, business studies and English literature. The essays in Part One introduce the relevance to book-trade history of network theory and techniques, while Part Two is a series of case studies ranging chronologically from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Topics include the movement of early medieval manuscript books, the publication of Shakespeare, the distribution of seventeenth-century political pamphlets in Utrecht and Exeter, book-trade networks before 1750 in the English East Midlands, the itinerant book trade in northern France in the late eighteenth century, how an Australian newspaper helped to create the Scottish public sphere, the networks of the Belgian publisher Murquardt, and transatlantic radical book-trade networks in the early twentieth century.

In the early modern herbal, Sarah Neville finds a captivating example of how Renaissance print culture shaped scientific authority.

London as a center for business and culture provided the essential focus for the development of the English book trade. In physically constricted urban spaces, printing, bookselling and all the associated activities were organized in intricate topographical patterns. How this worked on the ground provides the central theme of the volume, containing essays by specialists in a variety of fields. Several chapters explore the communities of printers and booksellers around St. Paul's Cathedral and its neighborhood in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Other topics range across the areas of London associated with the print trade, and with French emigres in the book trade, to the output of private presses in the London suburbs in the nineteenth century.

Originally published in 1938, and as a third edition in 1974, this volume presents the results of original research into the economic aspects of the transition from the medieval manuscript to the modern printed book. It discusses the problems of supply of materials and labour created by the introduction of machinery and the growth of the literary market. The social evolution of the printing crafts is portrayed, focussing first upon the Stationers’ Company and later upon the trade union. The book traces the development of the author-printer-publisher relationship, and its bearing on the question of copyright and reviews, inter alia the organisation and price policy of bookselling from the days of legal maximum prices to the net book agreement. The 3rd edition contains sections on Public Lending Right, paperbacks, photo-copying in its relation to publishing and the rise of international publishing. .

This biographical dictionary gives a fascinating picture of the spread of printing in England up to the mid-sixteenth century.

This volume examines the Scottish book trade from c.1500 to c.1720, looking at booksellers, bookbinders, stationers and printers and their relationship to the forces of authority. The scale of the Scottish book trade in this period was surprisingly large, consisting of over 150 printers and over 400 booksellers, but its rate of growth was not constant as it was buffeted by the winds of economic and political circumstances. It is the public, not private world of book dissemination that is examined. Emphsis is placed more on supply than on demand. It is shown that the unique qualities of the printed book, with its blend of commerce and technology on the one hand, and intellect and ideology on the other, ensured that authority - burghs, church, governemt (crown and executive) and law courts - reacted with a complex response of liberty and prohibition. So it was for all nations experiencing the arrival of printing, but Scotland had its own particular range of dynamics, a distinct Scottish tradition.

This study establishes the remarkable presence of Shakespeare's plays and poems in the early modern English book trade.

An international trade emerged between 1870-1895 that incorporated the circulation of books among countries worldwide. A history of the social network and select agents who sold and distributed books overseas, this study demonstrates agents increasingly thought of the world as a negotiable, connected system and books as transnational commodities.