page_title: Term Catalogue
section_title: Structure and Scope
hierarchical_section_title: Term Catalogue / English Term Catalogues, 1668 to 1711 / Structure and Scope
caption_attribution_description: English: London's book market 1700, distribution of titles according to Term Catalogue data with a special focus on the poetical and fictional production
context_page_description: A Term Catalogue, German Messkatalog, is a serial publication compiled to inform customers—most importantly book traders from other cities—of the book production as available on the book fairs. The first such catalogue was issued by Georg Willer in Augsburg in 1564. Several projects followed the model including the series of English Term Catalogues issued by John Starkey and Robert Clavell under the title Mercurius Librarius, or, a catalogue of books from 1668 to 1711. "Term" referred to the dates of the fairs that would be held as platforms of the trade.
  The catalogues are a valuable source to researchers today, because they often give dates of the publication processes and information about working titles that were eventually dropped. The segmentation is of interest for its contemporary perspective on the market: a perspective modern literary histories no longer share.
context_section_description: The 161 catalogues printed between 1668 and 1711 show an increase in the number of titles. The average catalogue listed 109 books under 10 headings. Some catalogues had up to 13 headings; the minimum was six in the small catalogue that appeared for Hillary 1708. The first catalogues had begun with 40 to 50 titles; later catalogues reached 150 to 200 titles. The Easter catalogue of 1689 listed the exceptional number of 293 books.
  All catalogues opened with a Divinity section and closed with a section of books reprinted. Most of the catalogues offered additional advertisements at the end to announce ongoing projects looking for subscribers and sponsors. The sequence of categories in between varied. History was most often the second heading, Miscellanies usually the one before the Reprinted section. Other prominent headings were Physick (medicine), Mathematicks (comprising Architecture and Navigation in several of the catalogues), Poetry and Plays, Musick, Navigation, Globes, Maps, Cards, Charts, Plates (in the sense of illustrations), Law, Libri Latini (& François), Headings such as Architecture, Heraldry and Astrology remained rare.
  None of the catalogues offered a unified section for fiction, or for literature in the modern sense. Novels were customarily listed among the "Histories"—the majority of which were non-fictional—and sometimes as "Miscellanies". The category "Poetry and Plays" was reserved for verse and stage plays.
  The following table looks at all titles under the eleven most prominent headings, with a perspective on the decades and the overall trends:
  A comparison with modern ESTC data proves that the Term Catalogues remained highly selective. The ESTC lists between more than 13,000 and almost 23,000 titles for the individual decades. The Term Catalogue numbers range at 20%-30% of that. Catalogues of the 1690s had the greatest average numbers of titles, but ESTC data imply that the 1690s actually saw a slight drop in total title numbers. The distortions are partly the result of the project's instability in 1708 and 1709. They reflect, in part, the continuous neglect of ephemeral publications such as short political pamphlets.   
  The series ended in 1708 and 1709 with double editions. The remaining catalogue for Easter 1711 began with a new number 1 issue, and remains remarkable with its attempt to establish a new structure. The long category of reprinted books was split and brought under the respective headings of the new major categories: 1) Divinity, 2) History & Politicks, 3) Mathematical Sciences, 4) Physick & Natural Philosophy, 5) Philology, and 6) Poetry. The new arrangement confirmed the position of the two categories of religious and political publications. "History and Politikcs" stresses the interest in ongoing—religio-political—debates. 1711 is still marked by the Sacheverell affair.
caption: London's book market 1700, distribution of titles according to Term Catalogue data, after dissolving the "Reprinted" section. Poetic and fictional production does not yet have a unified place.
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