This book is the first modern analysis of the coasting trade in Elizabethan England. Drawing on a significant body of evidence, including evidence from the port books of Bristol, Southampton and Hull, as well as from a much broader array of early modern sources, it reconstructs both coastal trading patterns and the lives of the merchants, mariners and craftspeople that underpinned them. While Bristol, Hull and Southampton represent the primary case study ports, a much broader geographical range is explored, providing new insights into not just the trade routes, markets, commodities and ships on which this key element of England's maritime economy rested, but also into the men (and few women) who plied coastal trade routes, exploring their socio-economic status, social and political networks, and maritime business strategies. It analyses the linkages between merchants, shipmasters, and ships, discusses merchants' business practices, including their approach to risk, and shows how this shaped the early modern shipping industry. In presenting evidence in an engaging and easily digestible way, and making use of social network analysis, the book makes clear the complexities of coastal trader networks, and the business acumen of coastal traders. While scholarly work hitherto has focused overly on overseas traders, this book corrects the imbalance, revealing in detail the complex commercial and personal lives that coastal traders lived during this pivotal period in England's maritime and commercial expansion. Leanna Brinkley completed her doctorate at the University of Southampton.

Volume 4 of The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain covers the years between the incorporation of the Stationers' Company in 1557 and the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695. In a period marked by deep religious divisions, civil war and the uneasy settlement of the Restoration, printed texts - important as they were for disseminating religious and political ideas, both heterodox and state approved - interacted with oral and manuscript cultures. These years saw a growth in reading publics, from the developing mass market in almanacs, ABCs, chapbooks, ballads and news, to works of instruction and leisure. Atlases, maps and travel literature overlapped with the popular market but were also part of the project of empire. Alongside the creation of a literary canon and the establishment of literary publishing there was a tradition of dissenting publishing, while women's writing and reading became increasingly visible.