Overview

This volume assembles documents that illustrate the changing structure of the British publishing industry in the nineteenth century. It charts the increasing separation of the functions of printing, publishing and retailing in the production and distribution of books, and the emergence of new economic models of publishing. For most of the period the book trade operated on a shortage of capital, depending upon fragile networks of credit and debt which could lead, as in the financial crisis of 1825-6, to the collapse of many businesses. The volume documents how the structures of the industry impacted upon the pricing structure of books and periodicals and charts the slow emergence of a mass-market for print. Major points of contention such as the ‘taxes on knowledge’ and the battle over legal deposit are traced, along with recurring debates over discounting and underselling. The volume focuses on key moments such as the controversy over free trade in the 1840s and 1850s and the debates over price protection which led to the formation of the Net Book Agreement in 1900.

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9780367568344

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Professor David Finkelstein (BA, PhD, FEA, FRHistS, FRSA) is a cultural historian who has published over 90 books, essays and refereed journal articles in areas related to nineteenth-century cultural history, print culture and media history, several of which have won awards. His most recent work includes Movable Types: Roving Creative Printers of the Victorian World (Oxford University Press, 2018), and the 850 page edited Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, volume 2: Expansion and Evolution, 1800-1900 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Current projects include a co-edited volume on the colonial periodical press, as well as work on print workplaces in Edwardian visual culture. Dr Andrew Nash (MA, MSc, PhD) is Reader in Book History and Deputy Director of the Institute of English Studies in the University of London’s School of Advanced Study where he directs the MA in the History of the Book and the London Rare Books School. In addition to monographs on Victorian literature and Scottish literature, he has edited or co-edited many works in the field of book and publishing history including The Culture of Collected Editions (2003), Literary Cultures and the Material Book (2007), New Directions in the History of the Novel (2014) and, most recently, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 7: the Twentieth Century and Beyond (2019). He is part of a new Leverhulme-funded research project on the early history of the Society of Authors (2020-24).

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