Developments in cultural history and literary criticism have suggested alternative ways of addressing the interpretation of reading. How did people read in the past? Where and why did they read? How were the manner and purpose of reading envisaged and recorded by contemporaries - and why? Drawing on fields as diverse as medieval pedagogy, textual bibliography, the history of science, and social and literary history, this collection of fourteen essays highlights both the singularity of personal reading experiences and the cultural conventions involved in reading and its perception. An introductory essay offers an important critical assessment of the various contributions to the development of the subject in recent times. This book constitutes a major addition to our understanding of the history of readers and reading.

This title was first published in 2000: The essays in this collection re-examine the phenomenon of "free print" in print culture. By focusing on free print the volume offers perspectives in the cultural history of textual transmission from the early-18th century to the mid-20th century. "Publishing" in the sense of making the print public, embraces the free and often unsolicited distribution of religious literature, political propaganda, and civic and personal gifts. The free print examined here includes gift-books; advertisements and commemorations; the promotion of knowledge, institutions and services; commercial and philanthropic lobbying; religious and missionary activity; and political propaganda both official and underground. Broad issues range from the consideration of press finances, government intervention, and private and institutional patronage, to textual familiarity and social ritual. The approach is deliberately comparative. Ten established scholars of book and printing history, who look at very different regions and periods, test the nature of the alleged authority of print and the apparent value of the commercial tag through the study of print which arrives unbidden in the hands of its consumers. The chapters in this volume are based on papers first given at the "Print for Free" conference organized by the Cambridge Project for the Book Trust in September 1996.

This title was first published in 2000: The essays in this collection re-examine the phenomenon of "free print" in print culture. By focusing on free print the volume offers perspectives in the cultural history of textual transmission from the early-18th century to the mid-20th century. "Publishing" in the sense of making the print public, embraces the free and often unsolicited distribution of religious literature, political propaganda, and civic and personal gifts. The free print examined here includes gift-books; advertisements and commemorations; the promotion of knowledge, institutions and services; commercial and philanthropic lobbying; religious and missionary activity; and political propaganda both official and underground. Broad issues range from the consideration of press finances, government intervention, and private and institutional patronage, to textual familiarity and social ritual. The approach is deliberately comparative. Ten established scholars of book and printing history, who look at very different regions and periods, test the nature of the alleged authority of print and the apparent value of the commercial tag through the study of print which arrives unbidden in the hands of its consumers. The chapters in this volume are based on papers first given at the "Print for Free" conference organized by the Cambridge Project for the Book Trust in September 1996.

In this broad-ranging study, James Raven explores popular literature and the book trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. Based on intensive research into the production and sale of literature ranging from novels and magazines to courtesy books and fashionable tracts, the book examines the representation of the newly wealthy. Dr Raven challenges the recent and controversial notion that prejudice against the businessman was a late nineteenth-century phenomenon. He shows how, during a period of often bewildering change and instability, a competitive literature industry led reaction against excessive consumer spending, contributed to the definition of legitimate economic behaviour, and carried unprecedented attacks upon the social presumption of tradesman. This is a scholarly and stimulating study which makes important contributions to debates on the supposed decline of the British industrial spirit and on the growing self-confidence of the middle class. Judging New Wealth adds very greatly to our understanding of the cultural and business history of late eighteenth-century England.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 14 original essays, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book reveals the history of books in all their various forms, from the ancient world to the digital present. Leading international scholars offer an original and richly illustrated narrative that is global in scope. The history of the book is the history of millions of written, printed, and illustrated texts, their manufacture, distribution, and reception. Here are different types of production, from clay tablets to scrolls, from inscribed codices to printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, from written parchment to digital texts. The history of the book is a history of different methods of circulation and dissemination, all dependent on innovations in transport, from coastal and transoceanic shipping to roads, trains, planes and the internet. It is a history of different modes of reading and reception, from learned debate and individual study to public instruction and entertainment. It is a history of manufacture, craftsmanship, dissemination, reading and debate. Yet the history of books is not simply a question of material form, nor indeed of the history of reading and reception. The larger question is of the effect of textual production, distribution and reception - of how books themselves made history. To this end, each chapter of this volume, succinctly bounded by period and geography, offers incisive and stimulating insights into the relationship between books and the story of their times.

In 14 original essays, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book reveals the history of books in all their various forms, from the ancient world to the digital present. Leading international scholars offer an original and richly illustrated narrative that is global in scope. The history of the book is the history of millions of written, printed, and illustrated texts, their manufacture, distribution, and reception. Here are different types of production, from clay tablets to scrolls, from inscribed codices to printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, from written parchment to digital texts. The history of the book is a history of different methods of circulation and dissemination, all dependent on innovations in transport, from coastal and transoceanic shipping to roads, trains, planes and the internet. It is a history of different modes of reading and reception, from learned debate and individual study to public instruction and entertainment. It is a history of manufacture, craftsmanship, dissemination, reading and debate. Yet the history of books is not simply a question of material form, nor indeed of the history of reading and reception. The larger question is of the effect of textual production, distribution and reception - of how books themselves made history. To this end, each chapter of this volume, succinctly bounded by period and geography, offers incisive and stimulating insights into the relationship between books and the story of their times.

Histories you can trust. In 14 original essays, The Oxford History of the Book reveals the history of books in all their various forms, from the ancient world to the digital present. Leading international scholars offer an original and richly illustrated narrative that is global in scope. The history of the book is the history of millions of written, printed, and illustrated texts, their manufacture, distribution, and reception. Here are different types of production, from clay tablets to scrolls, from inscribed codices to printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, from written parchment to digital texts. The history of the book is a history of different methods of circulation and dissemination, all dependent on innovations in transport, from coastal and transoceanic shipping to roads, trains, planes and the internet. It is a history of different modes of reading and reception, from learned debate and individual study to public instruction and entertainment. It is a history of manufacture, craftsmanship, dissemination, reading and debate. Yet the history of books is not simply a question of material form, nor indeed of the history of reading and reception. The larger question is of the effect of textual production, distribution and reception - of how books themselves made history. To this end, each chapter of this volume, succinctly bounded by period and geography, offers incisive and stimulating insights into the relationship between books and the story of their times.

Many more people encountered newspapers, business press products or jobbing print than the glamorous books of the Enlightenment. This book looks at the way in which print effected a business revolution. 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 politicaleconomy. 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 noprior 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 itmeant 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.

This historical bibliography offers an entirely new foundation for the literary history of the late eighteenth century and Romantic period. Examining copies of all known surviving novels and reconstructing all those lost, the volume provides full details and a new introductory account of the authorship, publication, and review of new prose novels in English, 1770-1799.

This is the first complete copy-based record of the English novel at a key moment in its development, during the Romantic era. There are almost 2,500 separate entries in all, providing accurate researched details of authors, bibliographical composition of books and the whereabouts of surviving copies. It is a valuable record of women's writing: indicating that as much as 60 per cent of fiction written at this time was by female authors.

Developments in cultural history and literary criticism have suggested alternative ways of addressing the interpretation of reading. How did people read in the past? Where and why did they read? How were the manner and purpose of reading envisaged and recorded by contemporaries - and why? Drawing on fields as diverse as medieval pedagogy, textual bibliography, the history of science, and social and literary history, this collection of fourteen essays highlights both the singularity of personal reading experiences and the cultural conventions involved in reading and its perception. An introductory essay offers an important critical assessment of the various contributions to the development of the subject in recent times. This book constitutes a major addition to our understanding of the history of readers and reading.