This is a study of international print networks developed across the English-speaking world over a significant part of the long nineteenth century. The first study of its kind, it draws on unique sources from Australasia, North America, South Africa, the British Isles, and Ireland, to explore how printers interacted and shared trade and cultural identities across international boundaries during the period 1830-1914. Morality, mobility, mobilisation, and solidarity were central to how compositors and print trade workers defined themselves during this period. These themes are addressed in case studies on roving printers, striking printers, and creative printers. The case studies explore the cultural values and trade skills transmitted and embedded by such actors, the global networks that enabled print workers to travel across continents in search of work and experience, the trade actions reliant on mobilization and information-sharing across the printing world, and the creative ideas that printers shared through such means as memoirs, poetry, prose, and trade news contributions to print trade journals and other public outlets.

First published in 1967, Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry was written to provide a comprehensive picture of the development of organisations of both employers and those employed in the British printing industry. The book traces the story from the seventeenth century Craft Guilds and the Stationers Company, through the development of trade unions and union rule in the nineteenth century and up to the technical revolution of the early 1900s. Later chapters cover in detail problems such as restrictive practices and productivity bargaining in the thirty years prior to the original publication of the book. It also explores how their aims and strategies are related to changing technological and economic conditions. Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry will appeal to those with an interest in social history and the history of industrial relations, particularly with regards to the printing industry.