Producing the eighteenth-century book

This volume brings together twelve essays exploring the history of the book in the long eighteenth century. Responding to the growing body of knowledge on eighteenth-century book trades and culture, this collection argues for the importance of integrating literary scholarship and the various practices of book history. Collectively it develops several key themes including: a rectification of the tendency in literary studies to be blind to the materiality of the book and its implications for literature; a focus on the ways in which the forms of books inform and influence literature and vice versa; the significance of commercial pressures on eighteenth-century book production; the parallels to be drawn between the eighteenth-century expansion of print and the dislocation of a scribal culture and our own transformation to digital media. Among widely known figures in the profession of authorship and the book trade who receive detailed attention are Alexander Pope, Delarivier Manley, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Edmund Curll, and Robert Dodsley. The texts investigated range from encyclopedias to works on cookery, from horse-racing studiobooks to popular reprints, and from law manuals to domestic commonplace books. The collection points to new areas for research, including the reading and writing practices represented in handwritten books and the potential for harnessing new media information to understand better the history of print practices. Complemented by thirty-five illustrations, this collection opens with prefatory remarks by J. Paul Hunter. Fresh research by leading specialists in the field, along with contributions by younger scholars, combine to produce the fullest appraisal of the evolution of print culture in this period. -- from dust jacket.