British Book Market from 1600-1800

Summary

• The 1662 Printing Act in the British book market led to a strict censorship of printed materials. This meant that for some time after 1665 the only legal newspaper was the official London Gazette. The Daily Courant, began in 1702 and the first newspaper, the weekly Norwich Post, began in 1701.  Later, the general interest magazine came into existence and became wildly popular as well. The most important one was The Gentleman’s Magazine, which began in 1731, and continued on into the early twentieth century.  This made general interest magazines, among others, one of the characteristic products of the eighteenth-century English book trade.

• Literacy had come a long way in 200 years.  By the end of the eighteenth century illiteracy was both socially and economically damaging in British culture. There was less progress in parts of the U.K. that weren’t England, but they too were still improving. This created newfound importance stressed on literacy created larger markets for the book trade.

•  The rise in literacy also led to a rise in the book market in Britain during the eighteenth century. There were more people, richer people, higher literacy rates, and an easier exchange of information than ever before in these parts of Europe, so it’s only natural that there was more books and other texts being printed than ever before.

• London’s first public library opened in 1661, by Francis Kirkman, where customers could borrow books for a limited period of time for a fee. By the 1780s, circulating libraries had also become an important part of the book-trade economy.

Industrialization of the Book from 1800-1970

Summary 

• The founding of Penguin Books in 1935 made the mass-market paperback book what it is today. The company was founded by Allen Lane with the aim of making good-quality writing cheaply available.

• Stereotyping was a new method of creating  cast-metal plate for printing in the 1800’s.  Printers would have wanted to use this method because it would save them time and money by not having to replace the type as often because the metal wouldn’t wear down as quickly.  

• By 1807, papermaking machines had become accessible commercially and were able to produce more paper in a day than previous hand-made methods could produce in a week. Improvements continued to be made, most notably the addition of steam-heated drying cylinders. By the 1830s, machine-made paper was commonly used in all kinds of printing, including books.

Comment

“There is human intelligence behind every word that has been put into print” is my favorite line from this chapter.  I think that applies to not only the author, but also to every person involved in other aspects of a text’s life from the time the thoughts are conceived in the author’s mind up through the printing, binding, publication, selling, and circulation of a text from there on out. 

My question is this: Feather states that the first public library in London opened in 1661, and that by the 1780’s libraries were an integral part of book-trade economy.  Were libraries then anything like the symbol for scholarship and research like they are today, or were they smaller and used mostly just for leisure? When do you think the transition occurred from small time book-trade library to the place we know it as today?