Of all the new markets for print that emerged between 1695 and 1833, the one for young readers was arguably among the most important to Great Britain's polite, commercial society. This chapter shows that during this period the proliferation of printed materials for children cannot be understood without analysing their production and reception. The survey of the children's books market in the early eighteenth century, though not definitive, does deflate the romantic notion that the appearance of John Newbery's Pretty little pocket-book in the early 1740s forever changed the history of children's reading. The Longman ledgers for the end of the period between 1695 and 1833 show that school-books such as those by Fenning and Lindley Murray continued to dominate children's book production, with the steady-selling titles reprinted as often as every few years in relatively large editions.

Schools open to the public may also have originated in Saxon times. In the medieval period-English universities, students often needed remedial instruction in elementary Latin grammar, while advanced Latin grammar formed part of the undergraduate course. Once pupils had mastered basic Latin, they continued their studies with texts in Latin itself. The difficult task of compiling an English dictionary with Latin equivalents was accomplished by a Dominican recluse of King's Lynn, who completed the work, called Promptorium parvulorum, in 1440. In the great lay households, boys and girls of the nobility and gentry were trained for lay careers rather than ecclesiastical ones, with greater emphasis on the vernacular than on Latin. When printed books became available in England, from English presses or through importation, large possibilities existed for selling educational books to noble households, and schools in towns and religious houses. Printers other than William Caxton sought to exploit the market in school text-books.