Chapter 5 - Book Trade

Summary

This chapter provides a helpful primer to Swift’s relationship with the early eighteenth-century book trade. The first section focuses on the formats, sizes, prices, and lengths of Swift’s works, most of which were first published separately and not in anthologies. The second section examines imprints, in particular those of ‘trade publishers’, and how these imprints could be used as cover for anonymous and risky publications. The third and final section looks at the issue of copyright and how it shaped Swift’s decisions when publishing in London and Dublin. As the chapter shows, Swift showed loyalty to book-trade members who showed loyalty to him, including those in Ireland.