Part I, "The old printer", is a revised edition of the author's "William Caxton", 1844; pt. II. "The modern press" is "a view of the progress of the press to our own day, especially in relation to ... cheap popular literature".

"Explores the evolution of the idea that the rise of print culture was a threat to the royal government of eighteenth-century France. Argues that French printers did much to foster this view as they negotiated a place in the expanding bureaucratic apparatus of the state"--Provided by publisher.

Annotation 'Divine Art, Infernal Machine' presents a history of the printing press & of the ambivalent attitudes of the public toward printers & printing since the days of Gutenberg & his business partner Johann Fust, a gentleman often tellingly confused with the notorious Doctor Faustus.