Producing the eighteenth-century book
Subtitle: writers and publishers in England, 1650-1800
By: edited by Laura L. Runge and Pat Rogers.
Contributors: Runge, Laura L.; Rogers, Pat, 1938-
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Newark
Language: eng
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780874130690
Subjects: Books -- England -- History -- 18th century; Books -- England -- History -- 17th century; Authors and publishers -- England -- History -- 18th century; Authors and publishers -- England -- History -- 17th century; English literature -- Publishing -- England -- History -- 18th century; English literature -- Publishing -- England -- History -- 17th century; Book industries and trade -- England -- History -- 18th century; Book industries and trade -- England -- History -- 17th century
Description: 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.
Notes: "The idea for this book and most of the essays originated in the twentieth DeBartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of South Florida"--Acknowledgments.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The second coming of the book, 1740-1770 / Betty A. Schellenberg; title: Invisible books / Margaret J.M. Ezell; title: Uncovering the traces left behind : manuscript recipes, middleclass readers, and reading practices / Phyllis Thompson; title: The case and the exceptions : creating instrumental texts in law and literature / Simon Stern; title: The book that wrote an animal / Richard Nash; title: Intersections in book history, bibliography, and literary interpretation : three episodes in the publication history of Frances Burney's Cecilia / Catherine M. Parisian; title: The Warwick Lane network and the refashioning of "Atalantis" as a titular keyword : print and politics in the age of Queen Anne / Eleanor F. Shevlin; title: Pope's phantom Moore : plagiarism and the pseudonymous imprint / Evan R. Davis; title: Edmund Curll and the publishing trade / Pat Rogers; title: The technology and future of the book : what a digital "Grub Street" can tell us about communications, commerce, and creativity / Allison Muri; title: This world of words : Lucretian atomism and the shaping of the book / Roger D. Lund; title: Writing on writing : representations of the book in eighteenth-century literature / Barbara M. Benedict.