Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England

摘要

A significant quantity of recent work on the history of the book has added valuably to the discipline, by emphasizing the importance of nonbook and ephemeral printing to the sustainability of the trade and by simply enlarging the range of items that fall under the scrutiny of book historians-to the point where the long-held doubts over whether "book history" as a term corresponds usefully to the studies and practices of historians of printing must surely have become overwhelming. James Raven's new book, Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England, which focuses on nonbook printing in the eighteenth century and the role of the print trade's products as economic technologies and instruments, contributes further to this ongoing expansion, while simultaneously offering an important argument about the cultural impact of printing: that the print trade can illuminate considerably more of eighteenth-century economic history than just itself. In a study that fills in one of the spaces left by the same author's The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade (2007), Raven assesses the contribution of the print trades generally, and especially "jobbing" printing-small-item printing done by the job-to the development of English economic life between 1680 and 1800.