Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T17:33:32.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Changes in the world of publishing

from Part III - Histories: Writing in the New Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

Get access

Summary

The term ‘publishing’, used to denote a discrete and stable commercial practice, dates from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It was only at that time that people began to refer to such entities as ‘the world of publishing’ at all. Less abstractly, it was also at that time that publishers themselves appeared on the scene in something like their modern guise, soon becoming the dominant force in the commerce of the book. Both developments were of the utmost importance for the creation, distribution and reception of literary work. The earliest example of the general usage given by the Oxford English Dictionary is attributed to Sir Walter Scott – a provenance that is almost too appropriate. Whilst it is unlikely that Scott, or any other individual for that matter, really inaugurated the usage, he was famously the author who made the most of the transformation that was captured by this shift. Scott exemplified, and was taken at the time to exemplify, the possibilities raised by such conjunctions of literary and commercial innovation. Those conjunctions are the subject of this chapter.

The years of Romanticism saw the English book trade change from a craft to something that might plausibly be called an industry. The trade expanded enormously, adopted new business techniques, embraced specialization, addressed a far larger and more diverse readership, and, toward the end of the period, embraced major technological change. It created new modes of public dialogue, including new literary forms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Babbage, C., On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 4th edn (1835), in Babbage’s Works, 12 vols., ed. Campbell-Kelly, M., New York: NYU Press, 1989, vol. VIII.
Barnes, J. J., Authors, Publishers and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement, 1815–1854, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
Bentley, G. E., Jr, ‘Copyright Documents in the George Robinson Archive: William Godwin and Others, 1713–1820’, Studies in Bibliography 35 (1982).Google Scholar
Blagden, C., ‘Thomas Carnan and the Almanack Monopoly’, Studies in Bibliography 14 (1961).Google Scholar
Blakey, D., The Minerva Press, 1790–1820, London: Bibliographical Society, 1939.
Blanning, T. C. W., The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Bonnell, T. F., ‘John Bell’s Poets of Great Britain: The “little trifling edition” Revisited’, Modern Philology 85 (1987).Google Scholar
Brewer, J., The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997.
Brewer, J., and McCalman, I., ‘Publishing’, in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, ed. McCalman, I., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Brydges, S. E., The Autobiography, Times, Opinions, and Contemporaries of Sir Egerton Brydges, 2 vols., London: Cochrane and M’Crone, 1834.
Brydges, S. E., The British Bibliographer, 4 vols., London: Triphook et al., 1810–14.
Caritat, M.-J.-A., de Condorcet, Marquis, Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind, London: for J. Johnson, 1795.
[Carlile, R.], The Report of the Court of King’s Bench … being the Mock Trials of Richard Carlile, London: R. Carlile, 1822.
Castiglione, D., and Sharpe, L. (eds.), Shifting the Boundaries: Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995.
Cavallo, G., and Chartier, R. (eds.), A History of Reading in the West, Cambridge: Polity, 1999.
Chartier, R., The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Cochrane, L., Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
Cole, R. C., Irish Booksellers and English Writers, 1740–1800, London: Mansell, 1986.
Coleman, D. C., The British Paper Industry, 1495–1860: A Study in Industrial Growth, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.
Collins, W., ‘The Unknown Public’, Household Words 18:439 (21 August 1858).Google Scholar
Crook, R. E., A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley, London: Library Association, 1966.
Dooley, A. C., Author and Printer in Victorian England, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
Eliot, S., Some Patterns and Trends in British Publishing 1800–1919, London: Bibliographical Society, 1994.
Eliot, S.,‘Some Trends in British Book Production, 1800–1919’, in Literature in the Marketplace, ed. Jordan, J. O. and Patten, R. L., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Erickson, L., The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1800–1850, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Ezell, M. J. M., Social Authorship and the Advent of Print, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
Feather, J., A History of British Publishing, London: Routledge, 1988.
Feather, J.,‘The Merchants of Culture: Bookselling in Early Industrial England’, Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 217 (1983).Google Scholar
Feather, J., The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Ferdinand, C. Y., Benjamin Collins and the Provincial Newspaper Trade in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Fraistat, N., ‘Illegitimate Shelley: Radical Piracy and the Textual Edition as Cultural Performance’, PMLA 109:3 (1994).Google Scholar
Frasca-Spada, M., and Jardine, N. (eds.), Books and the Sciences in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Fyfe, A., ‘Young Readers and the Sciences’, in Frasca-Spada, M. and Jardine, N. (eds.), Books and the Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Garside, P., ‘The English Novel in the Romantic Era: Consolidation and Dispersal’, in The English Novel, 1770–1829, ed. Garside, P., Raven, J. and Schowerling, R., vol. II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Garside, P.,‘Rob’s last raid: Scott and the Publication of the Waverley Novels’, in Myers, R. and Harris, M. (ed.), Author/Publisher Relations, Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1983.
Garside, P., J. Raven and R. Schowerling (eds.), The English Novel, 1770–1829, 2 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Gilmartin, K., Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Gitelman, L., Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
Goodfield-Toulmin, J., ‘Some Aspects of English Physiology, 1780–1840’, Journal of the History of Biology 2 (1969).Google Scholar
Habermas, J., The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (1962), trans. Burger, T. and Lawrence, F., Cambridge: Polity, 1989.
Hills, R. L., Papermaking in Britain, 1488–1988: A Short History, London: Athlone, 1988.
Howe, E., The London Compositor: Documents Relating to Wages, Working Conditions and Customs of the London Printing Trade, 1785–1900, London: Bibliographical Society, 1947.
Huett, L., ‘Among the Unknown Public: Household Words, All the Year Round, and the Mass-market Periodical in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Periodicals Review 38 (2005).Google Scholar
Hyland, P., and Sammells, N. (eds.), Writing and Censorship in Britain, London: Routledge, 1992.
Jacob, E. (ed.), Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery, London: J. Butterworth and Son, 1828.
Johns, A., ‘The Identity Engine: Science, Stereotyping, and Skill in Print’, in Roberts, L., Schaffer, S. and Dear, P. (eds.), The Mindful Hand, Chicago, IL: Edita/University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Johnson, J., Typographia, 2 vols., London: Longman et al., 1824.
Jordan, J. O., and Patten, R. L. (eds.), Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-century British Publishing and Reading Practices, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Keen, P., The Crisis of Literature in the 1790s: Print Culture and the Public Sphere, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Kelly, T., Early Public Libraries, London: Library Association, 1966.
Klancher, J. P., The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790–1832, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
Knight, C., William Caxton, London: C. Knight and Co., 1844.
Landon, R. G., ‘Small Profits do Great Things: James Lackington and Eighteenth-century Bookselling’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 5 (1976).Google Scholar
Lyons, M., ‘New Readers in the Nineteenth Century: Women, Children, Workers’, in Cavallo, G. and Chartier, R. (eds.), History of Reading in the West, Cambridge: Polity, 1999.
MacDougall, W., ‘Smugglers, Reprinters and Hot Pursuers: The Irish-Scottish Book Trade and Copyright Prosecutions in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Myers, R. and Harris, M. (eds.), The Stationers’ Company, Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1997.
McCalman, I., Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
McCalman, I. (ed.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
McKitterick, D. J., A History of Cambridge University Press. II: Scholarship and Commerce, 1698–1872, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Morison, S., John Bell, 1745–1831, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the author, 1930.
Myers, R., and Harris, M. (eds.), Author/Publisher Relations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1983.
Myers, R. and Harris, M.,The Stationers’ Company and the Book Trade 1550–1900, Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1997.
Phillips, J. W., A Bibliographical Inquiry into Printing and Bookselling in Dublin from 1670 to 1800, Dublin: University of Dublin, 1981.
Plant, M., The English Book Trade: An Economic History of the Making and Sale of Books, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1939.
Pollard, M., Dublin’s Trade in Books, 1550–1800, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Raven, J., ‘From Promotion to Proscription: Arrangements for Reading and Eighteenth-century Libraries’, in Raven, J., Small, H. and Tadmor, N. (eds.), The Practice and Representation of Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Raven, J., Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750–1800, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Raven, J.,‘The Novel Comes of Age’, in Garside, P., Raven, J. and Schowerling, R. (eds.), The English Novel, 1770–1829, vol. I, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Raven, J., Small, H. and Tadmor, N. (eds.), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Roberts, L., Schaffer, S. and Dear, P. (eds.), The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialization, Chicago, IL: Edita/University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Rose, M., Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Rosenbland, L. N., Papermaking in Eighteenth-century France: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761–1805, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Saunders, D., ‘Victorian Obscenity Law: Negative Censorship or Positive Administration?’, in Hyland, P. and Sammells, N. (eds.), Writing and Censorship, London: Routledge, 1992.
Secord, J. A., Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Sher, R. B., The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and their Publishers in Eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland, and America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
St Clair, W., The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Sutherland, J., Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers, London: MacMillan, 1995.
Swartz, R. G., ‘Wordsworth, Copyright, and the Commodities of Genius’, Modern Philology 89:4 (1992).Google Scholar
Temkin, O., ‘Basic Science, Medicine and the Romantic Era’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 37 (1963).Google Scholar
Topham, J., ‘A Textbook Revolution’, in Frasca-Spada, M. and Jardine, N. (eds.), Books and the Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Tyson, G. P., ‘Joseph Johnson, an Eighteenth-century Bookseller’, Studies in Bibliography 28 (1975).Google Scholar
Ure, A., The Philosophy of Manufactures, London: Knight, 1835.
Vail, J. W., The Literary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Viscomi, J., Blake and the Idea of the Book, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Walsh, C., A Bookseller of the Last Century, London: Griffith etc., 1885.
Wickwar, W. H., The Struggle for the Freedom of the Press, 1819–32, London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1928.
Winter, A., Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Wittmann, R., ‘Was there a Reading Revolution at the End of the Eighteenth Century?’, in Cavallo, G. and Chartier, R. (eds.), History of Reading in the West, Cambridge: Polity, 1999.
Woodmansee, M., The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Wordsworth, W., Prose Works, 3 vols., ed. Owen, W. J. B and Smyser, J. W., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
Zachs, W., The First John Murray and the Late Eighteenth-century London Book Trade, Oxford: by Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1998.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×