Bookscape: Geographies of Printing and Publishing in London before 1800

摘要

This is one of the latest volumes published by James Raven, who has become a sort of standard-bearer for the cause of book history, particularly of the eighteenth century. In this work, neatly encapsulated under the term 'Bookscape', Raven has extended the content of his Panizzi lectures of zoio to develop ideas about the relation of space and function in the metropolitan book trade. The theoretical justification for the cross-referencing of booksellers and printers with their physical environment is clear enough and does not necessarily benefit from the elaborate analysis of chapter one, in which some of the more obscure usages of space as a cultural signifier are given an airing. Throughout the work there does seem to be some tension between the pragmatic, ground-level material provided by the land tax assessments, and the attempt to flesh out the implications of the information in relation to a more general chronology of the trade. The organisation of information both by collection and dispersal at street level was being undertaken by a range of individuals and institutions who laid down tracks through the urban landscape across the eighteenth century. Much of this was commercial in character, some was sponsored by the institutions of local and national government. Within this latter category fell the rambling excursions of the parish-based rating assessors who annually wove their way through the built-up parishes of central London noting down the values, rentals, and tax-paying capacity of the people living and working in the vast and expanding network of individual properties. Some of these were inhabited by members of the book trades and this study has also grown out of the project 'Mapping the Print Culture of Eighteenth-Century London', now based at the London Metropolitan Archive. Through this book Raven offers a guide to the wonderfully dense and informative house-by-house tax record, suggesting how the information can be used to reconstruct key areas in the organization and structure of the print industry in London.