In early modern Britain, news was transformed from a currency of conversation and social exchange to a potent and lucrative industry, capable of manufacturing public opinion and transforming perceptions of literature, medicine and history. This collection of essays explores the impact of printed periodicals on British culture and society between 1590 and 1800.
Using a variety of methods and disciplines, the contributors present a picture of the emerging periodical press, including discussions of the origins of printed newspapers; the role of manuscript transmission of news; the relationship between newsbooks and the theatre; the use of newspapers by political radicals during the civil wars of the mid-17th century; the role of women in the early periodical press; the emergence of a public sphere of popular political opinion; the use of advertising as a form of communication; the distribution and readership of newspapers in the provinces; ideas of nationhood in the Scottish periodical press; and the role of medical and philosophical journals in promoting medical reform.
This study is a special issue of the journal "Prose Studies."

In early modern Britain, news was transformed from a currency of conversation and social exchange to a potent and lucrative industry, capable of manufacturing public opinion and transforming perceptions of literature, medicine and history. This collection of essays explores the impact of printed periodicals on British culture and society between 1590 and 1800.
Using a variety of methods and disciplines, the contributors present a picture of the emerging periodical press, including discussions of the origins of printed newspapers; the role of manuscript transmission of news; the relationship between newsbooks and the theatre; the use of newspapers by political radicals during the civil wars of the mid-17th century; the role of women in the early periodical press; the emergence of a public sphere of popular political opinion; the use of advertising as a form of communication; the distribution and readership of newspapers in the provinces; ideas of nationhood in the Scottish periodical press; and the role of medical and philosophical journals in promoting medical reform.
This study is a special issue of the journal "Prose Studies."

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.

Over the past decade, newspaper history has taken a cultural turn: a familiar political bibliographical narrative, which had been the model for newspaper history since about 1860, has been rescripted through a range of new multi-disciplinary interests shared in particular with the history of political thought and the history of books and of reading.
A new narrative of the early history of news and the media is emerging, and it raises questions which will be central to 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 17th century Britain? What was the relationship between commerce and politics? How do local exchanges of news relate to national practices and institutions? This volume offers a series of case studies exemplifying the new newspaper history, and seeks to establish an agenda for answering some of these questions.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal "Media History."

What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central toThe Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, an ambitious nine-volume series devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present. Between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the later seventeenth, governments, institutions and individuals learned to use inexpensively-produced printed texts to inform, entertain, and persuade. Cheap print quickly became rooted in British and Irish culture, both elite and popular. This substantial and authoritative collection of essays - the first of its kind - examines the developing role of popular printed texts in the first two centuries of print in Britain and Ireland. Its forty-five chapters (with sixty-six illustrations) look at a broad range of historical and social contexts, at comparisons with other European countries, at the variety of content and themes in cheap printed texts, the forms and genres that developed with and were used by cheap print, and concludes with a series of case studies exploring the role of print in particular years. The book takes none of these terms - Popular, Print, Culture - for granted, but interrogates each of them with a rich, contoured picture of the relationship between a popular readership, the materiality of books, the economy of the book trade, and political and cultural history. Its forty-two contributors come from different disciplines and with expertise in fields from political and book history, through visual and material culture, to rhetoric and literature. These contributors do not all agree on definitions, or on the history that underlies them, but instead establish the ground for future debates and examinations of the role of cheap print in early-modern Britain.

By the end of the seventeenth century the most effective means of persuasion and communication was the pamphlet, which created influential moral and political communities of readers, and thus formed a 'public sphere' of popular, political opinion. This book is a unique history of the printed pamphlet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain and traces its rise as an imaginative and often eloquent literary form. Using a long-term perspective and a broad range of historical, bibliographical and textual evidence, the book sketches a complex definition of a 'pamphlet', showing the coherence of the literary form, the diversity of genres and imaginative devices employed by pamphleteers; and it explores readers' relationship with pamphlets and how both influenced politics. Individual chapters examine topics such as Elizabethan religious controversy, the book trade, the distribution of books and pamphlets, pamphleteering in the English Civil War, women and gender, and print in the Restoration.

The first newspapers, or `newsbooks', appeared in 1641, although the reasons for their appearance have never been fully understood. The Invention of the Newspaper is the first interdisciplinary account of the origins and early development of the English newspaper, using both manuscript and printed evidence to account for the precise moment of the newsbook's appearance - a moment just a few months before the outbreak of civil war. Raymond explores the newspaper's unique place in the flourishing political print culture of the 1640s, showing how newsbooks drew from and then reformed elements of literary culture, being both produced by a public hunger for news and, in turn, creating a market for it. The Inverntion of the Newspaper presents previously unexplored evidence concerning the distribution and readership of seventeenth-century news publications, which suggests that the early newsbooks were widely read and highly influential, and that - even today - they exert a considerable influence over the way in which seventeenth-century history is perceived. Charting the newsbook's development as a genre, its narrative forms, literary merits and influences, and its relationship to other vehicles of communication, printed and spoken, such as sermons, alamanacs, and play-pamphlets, Raymond presents a detailed exploration of the newsbook's gradual dominance of the market for information.

This unique history of the printed pamphlet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain traces its rise as an imaginative and often eloquent literary form. Using a broad range of historical, bibliographical and textual evidence, the book shows the coherence of the literary form and the diversity of genres and imaginative devices employed by pamphleteers. Individual chapters examine Elizabethan religious controversy, the book trade, the distribution of pamphlets, pamphleteering in the English Civil War, women and gender, and print in the Restoration.

Milton's Paradise Lost, the most eloquent, most intellectually daring, most learned, and most sublime poem in the English language, is a poem about angels. It is told by and of angels; it relies upon their conflicts, communications, and miscommunications. They are the creatures of Milton's narrative, through which he sets the Fall of humankind against a cosmic background. Milton's angels are real beings, and the stories he tells about them rely on his understanding of what they were and how they acted. While he was unique in the sublimity of his imaginative rendering of angels, he was not alone in writing about them. Several early-modern English poets wrote epics that explore the actions of and grounds of knowledge about angels. Angels were intimately linked to theories of representation, and theology could be a creative force. Natural philosophers and theologians too found it interesting or necessary to explore angel doctrine. Angels did not disappear in Reformation theology: though centuries of Catholic traditions were stripped away, Protestants used them in inventive ways, adapting tradition to new doctrines and to shifting perceptions of the world. Angels continued to inhabit all kinds of writing, and shape the experience and understanding of the world. Milton's Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination explores the fate of angels in Reformation Britain, and shows how and why Paradise Lost is a poem about angels that is both shockingly literal and sublimely imaginative.

Milton's Paradise Lost, the most eloquent, most intellectually daring, most learned, and most sublime poem in the English language, is a poem about angels. It is told by and of angels; it relies upon their conflicts, communications, and miscommunications. They are the creatures of Milton's narrative, through which he sets the Fall of humankind against a cosmic background.
Milton's angels are real beings, and the stories he tells about them rely on his understanding of what they were and how they acted. While he was unique in the sublimity of his imaginative rendering of angels, he was not alone in writing about them. Several early-modern English poets wrote epics that explore the actions of and grounds of knowledge about angels. Angels were intimately linked to theories of representation, and theology could be a creative force. Natural philosophers and theologians too found it interesting or necessary to explore angel doctrine. Angels did not disappear in Reformation theology: though centuries of Catholic traditions were stripped away, Protestants used them in inventive ways, adapting tradition to new doctrines and to shifting perceptions of the world. Angels continued to inhabit all kinds of writing, and shape the experience and understanding of the world.
Milton's Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination explores the fate of angels in Reformation Britain, and shows how and why Paradise Lost is a poem about angels that is both shockingly literal and sublimely imaginative.

The first weekly newspapers, or 'newsbooks', appeared in 1641. The reasons for their appearance have never been fully understood. The Invention of the Newspaper is the first interdisciplinary account of the origins and early development of the English newspaper, using both manuscript and printed evidence to account for the precise moment of the newsbook's appearance - a few months before the outbreak of civil war. Raymond explores the newsbook's unique place in the flourishing political print culture of the 1640s, showing how it drew from and then reformed elements of literary culture, being both produced by a public hunger for news and, in turn, creating a market for news. The Invention of the Newspaper explores evidence for the distribution and readership of seventeenth-century news publications, which suggests that the early newsbooks were widely read and highly influential, and that - even today - they influence the way in which seventeenth-century history is perceived. Charting the newsbook's development as a genre, its narrative forms, literary merits and influences, and its relationship to other vehicles of communication, printed and spoken, such as sermons, almanacs, and play-pamphlets, Raymond presents a detailed exploration of the newsbook's gradual dominance of the market for information.

Essays on Milton's developing ideas on liberty, and his republicanism, as expressed in his writings over his lifetime. In his Second Defence of the English People (1654), reflecting on his career as a prose writer, prior to embarking on the composition of Paradise Lost, John Milton identified 'three varieties of liberty without whichcivilized life is scarcely possible, namely ecclesiastical liberty, domestic or personal liberty, and civil liberty'. In retrospect he was able to find in his earlier writings a systematic exposition of the grounds of freedom, and a commitment to expanding its domain through publication and polemic. Taking initiative from both the history of political thought and historicist aesthetics, the essays in this collection (which derive from the International Milton symposium at York) consider the conditions of liberty in Milton's writings, and the contested development of his republicanism, through his career as a civil servant and prose writer, through his great poems, to his posthumous reputation and the appropriation of his works; and they extend laterally to typologies of liberty, the realm of law, prosody, and religious faith and persecution.Winner of the 2002 Irene Samuel Prize for best composite work onMilton. The contributors are: THOMAS CORNS, JOHN CREASER, MARTIN DZELZAINIS, KATSUHIRO ENGETSU, STEPEHN FALLON, BARBARA LEWALSKI, JANEL MUELLER, CHRISTOPHER ORCHARD, GRAHAM PARRY, JOAD RAYMOND, JOHN RUMRICH, QUENTIN SKINNER, ANNE-JULIA ZWIERLEIN.GRAHAM PARRY is Professor of English, University of York; JOAD RAYMOND lectures in the School of English and American Studies, University of East Anglia.