Collected here as a homage to Robin Myers, respected book trade historian and editor of the Publishing Pathways Series devoted to studies in book trade and publishing history, these essays uncover the connections between the mechanics of the book trade and their human ends in the learning and transmission of knowledge. They show that the processes and materials involved in the production of books pave the way for larger economic and social issues ranging from business connections, patents, copyrights and their transfer, London's relations with Ireland and America, the Stationers' Company and what transpires when books pass into the hands of customers. This work also includes a memoir of Myers along with a bibliography of her published works. - See more at: http://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/47253/arnold-hunt-giles-mandelbrote-alison-shell/book-trade-its-customers-1450-1900-historical-essays-for-robin-myers#sthash.oAW8oRu8.dpuf -- Publisher's website.

Taking as its point of departure the lapse of the Licensing Act 1662 in 1695, this book examines the lead up to the passage of the Statute of Anne 1709 and charts the movement of copyright law throughout the eighteenth century, culminating in the House of Lords decision in Donaldson v Becket (1774). The established reading of copyright's development throughout this period, from the 1709 Act to the pronouncement in Donaldson, is that it was transformed from a publisher's right to an author's right; that is, legislation initially designed to regulate the marketplace of the bookseller and publisher evolved into an instrument that functioned to recognise the proprietary inevitability of an author's intellectual labours. The historical narrative which unfolds within this book presents a challenge to that accepted orthodoxy. The traditional analysis of the development of copyright in eighteenth-century Britain is revealed as exhibiting the character of long-standing myth, and the centrality of the modern proprietary author as the raison d'être of the copyright regime is displaced.

Influenced by Enlightenment principles and commercial transformations, the history of the book in the eighteenth century witnessed not only the final decades of the hand-press era but also developments and practices that pointed to its future: ’the foundations of modern copyright; a rapid growth in the publication, circulation, and reading of periodicals; the promotion of niche marketing; alterations to distribution networks; and the emergence of the publisher as a central figure in the book trade, to name a few.’ The pace and extent of these changes varied greatly within the different sociopolitical contexts across the western world. The volume’s twenty-four articles, many of which proffer broader theoretical implications beyond their specific focus, highlight the era’s range of developments. Complementing these articles, the introductory essay provides an overview of the eighteenth-century book and milestones in its history during this period while simultaneously identifying potential directions for new scholarship.

This volume brings together a selection of the papers presented at the “Print Networks” conference at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, in July 2011. The conference theme, “Religion and the book trade”, was chosen to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. Numerous events throughout the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world took place to commemorate this historic event, the Print Networks conference being one of many. Religious books – be they tracts, sermons, homilies, hymn books, or Bibles – were primarily used by all denominations to spread their version of Christianity, to attract people to their cause, and to retain the loyalty of supporters. But these publications are also credited with the survival of indigenous languages, and, naturally, the printers and distributors of these religious works were crucial to the process of spreading both religion and literacy among the population. The contributions to this book cover a wide gamut of religion and the book trade from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Most of the chapters are concerned with the European book trade and concentrate on Christian religions and cover both Catholic and Protestant, particularly Nonconformist/Dissenter, experiences. Most of the chapters relate to the British and Irish book trade, but there are also contributions discussing Italy and the Netherlands. There are chapters relating to the printers and publishers of religious works; authorship; the issue and production of religious periodicals; the promoters of religious libraries; and clandestine elements of the trade. This volume emphasises the pivotal role played by those in the book trade – printers, publishers or booksellers – in the distribution of religious works, and demonstrates that spreading the ideas of their authors, creators, or translators would have been far more difficult without their involvement. This book will be of interest to academics, independent scholars, heritage professionals and research students in the fields of book trade history; book arts; bibliography; bookbinding; printing and typographic history; publishing; social and industrial history; and religious history.

Volume 1 of A History of the Book in America, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, encompasses the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is organized around three major themes: the persisting colonial relationship between European settlements and the Old World; the gradual emergence of a pluralistic book trade that differentiated printers from booksellers; and the transition from a 'culture of the Word', organized around an understanding of print as a vehicle of the sacred, to the culture of republicanism, epitomized by Benjamin Franklin, and culminating in the uses of print during the Revolutionary era. The volume will also describe nascent forms of literary and learned culture (including the circulation of manuscripts), literacy and censorship, orality, and the efforts by Europeans to introduce written literary to Native Americans and African Americans.

A study of writing, publishing and marketing history books in the early modern period.

This 2001 book examines the ways in which books were produced, read and received during the reign of King James I. It challenges prevailing attitudes that press censorship in Jacobean England differed little from either the 'whole machinery of control' enacted by the Court of Star Chamber under Elizabeth or the draconian campaign implemented by Archbishop Laud, during the reign of Charles I. Cyndia Clegg, building on her earlier study Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, contends that although the principal mechanisms for controlling the press altered little between 1558 and 1603, the actual practice of censorship under King James I varied significantly from Elizabethan practice. The book combines historical analysis of documents with literary reading of censored texts and exposes the kinds of tensions that really mattered in Jacobean culture. It will be an invaluable resource for literary scholars and historians alike.