Introduction: the enterprise of booksellers -- The arrival of print: domestic and foreign -- Markets and martyrs: early modern commerce -- The late Stuart trade: new horizons -- Investing in books: the supremacy of the booksellers -- High and low: locating the trades -- Boosting demand: stationers, printers, and sellers -- Challenges and survivals: the late eighteenth century -- Promoting the wares -- Risking failure -- Steam and stamps: nineteenth-century transformation
Summary:
In 1450 very few English men or women were personally familiar with a book; but by 1850, the great majority of people daily encountered books, magazines, or newspapers. This text explores the history of this fundamental transformation.
