What does it mean to focus on the decade as a unit of literary history? Emerging from the shadows of iconic Victorian authors such as Eliot and Tennyson, the 1880s is a decade that has been too readily overlooked in the rush to embrace end-of-century decadence and aestheticism. The 1880s witnessed new developments in transatlantic networks, experiments in lyric poetry, the decline of the three-volume novel, and the revaluation of authors, journalists and the reading public. The contributors to this collection explore the case for the 1880s as both a discrete point of literary production, with its own pressures and provocations, and as part of literature's sense of its expanded temporal and geographical reach. The essays address a wide variety of authors, topics and genres, offering incisive readings of the diverse forces at work in the shaping of the literary 1880s.

Explores the diverse forces that shaped developments in literature in the 1880s, an often overlooked literary decade.

V. 1. The colonial book in the Atlantic world: This book carries the interrelated stories of publishing, writing, and reading from the beginning of the colonial period in America up to 1790. v. 2 An Extensive Republic: This volume documents the development of a distinctive culture of print in the new American republic. v. 3. The industrial book 1840-1880: This volume covers the creation, distribution, and uses of print and books in the mid-nineteenth century, when a truly national book trade emerged. v. 4. Print in Motion: In a period characterized by expanding markets, national consolidation, and social upheaval, print culture picked up momentum as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth. v. 5. The Enduring Book: This volume addresses the economic, social, and cultural shifts affecting print culture from Word War II to the present.

This volume explores the impact of printing on the European theatre in the period 1480-1880 and shows that the printing press played a major part in the birth of modern theatre.

The ranks of English women writers rose steeply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contributing to the era’s revolutionary social movements as well as to transforming literary genres in prose and poetry. The phenomena of ‘the new’ — ‘New Women’, ‘New Unionism’, ‘New Imperialism’, ‘New Ethics’, ‘New Critics’, ‘New Journalism’, ‘New Man’ — are this moment’s touchstones. This book tracks the period's new social phenomena and unfolds its distinctively modern modes of writing. It provides expert introductions amid new insights into women’s writing throughout the United Kingdom and around the globe.

Volume 3 of A History of the Book in America narrates the emergence of a national book trade in the nineteenth century, as changes in manufacturing, distribution, and publishing conditioned, and were conditioned by, the evolving practices of authors and readers. Chapters trace the ascent of the "industrial book--a manufactured product arising from the gradual adoption of new printing, binding, and illustration technologies and encompassing the profusion of nineteenth-century printed materials--which relied on nationwide networks of financing, transportation, and communication. In tandem with increasing educational opportunities and rising literacy rates, the industrial book encouraged new sites of reading; gave voice to diverse communities of interest through periodicals, broadsides, pamphlets, and other printed forms; and played a vital role in the development of American culture. Contributors: Susan Belasco, University of Nebraska Candy Gunther Brown, Indiana University Kenneth E. Carpenter, Newton Center, Massachusetts Scott E. Casper, University of Nevada, Reno Jeannine Marie DeLombard, University of Toronto Ann Fabian, Rutgers University Jeffrey D. Groves, Harvey Mudd College Paul C. Gutjahr, Indiana University David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School David M. Henkin, University of California, Berkeley Bruce Laurie, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Eric Lupfer, Humanities Texas Meredith L. McGill, Rutgers University John Nerone, University of Illinois Stephen W. Nissenbaum, University of Massachusetts Lloyd Pratt, Michigan State University Barbara Sicherman, Trinity College Louise Stevenson, Franklin & Marshall College Amy M. Thomas, Montana State University Tamara Plakins Thornton, State University of New York, Buffalo Susan S. Williams, Ohio State University Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin