WILLIAM PICKERING, (1796-1854), ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLER., PUBLISHER, AND BOOK DESIGNER: A STUDY IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY BOOK-TRADE. By James M. McDonnell This study is the first systematic and detailed examination of the life and career of William Pickering. Pickering was chosen as a subject because he can be regarded as a transitional figure. In a period when the specialist publisher was coming to the fore, and bookselling and publishing were tending to become quite separate occupations, Pickering's combination of rare-book dealing and publishing was a continuation of eighteenth century practices into the 1850s. On the other hand Pickering's invention of cloth binding for books, his creation of a personal publishing style, his achievements as a book designer, and his involvement with the movement to lower book prices, are all innovatory traits. The study argues that Pickering's conservative and innovatory tendencies can best be understood as a response to particular social and economic conditions. It investigates Pickering's perception of and relation to his public, his authors, and his printer (Charles Whittingham the Younger) and financial backer (John Joseph Thornthwaite). It also examines Pickering's awareness of the financial and economic conditions which constrained his business. The argument is based upon an extensive and thorough study of Pickering Is extant correspondence, and upon those papers relating to his business which have been preserved. The most important primary source has been the printing ledgers of the Chiswick Press.

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This thesis looks beyond the stereotypes of women as transmitters and caretakers of businesses by focussing on the careers of three women, one a widow who remarried, one a woman with no apparent family connection with the trade, and the third another widow who carried on the business for almost ten years after the death of her husband. Their careers are reconstructed from biographical data and the details of their publishing output. Emphasis is placed on the relationship of individuals to the sectarian communities for which they published, and on the ways in which sectarian material came to be published and distributed. The studies suggest ways in which women's inferior legal status could protect them in their 'seditious' activities, and reveal the inadequacies of attempts to control the press during the period 1645-75. Hannah Allen's output demonstrates her development over a brief period of a specialized trade in books representing the strand of Independent thought which grew into Fifth Monarchism, and her emergence from economic dependency on partnerships to become a publisher in her own right. Mary Westwood's career reveals a level of publishing outside the London book trade and concerned exclusively with a Quaker market largely in-the provinces. The career of Elizabeth Calvert is examined both before and after the death of her husband in order to investigate her role in a leading radical bookseiling business. -' Her later activities provide evidence of the shortcomings of the 1662 'Licensing, Act, and confrontations between a group of 'Confederate' women and the authorities suggest how women could avoid punishment despite their persistent publishing of nonconformist and opposition literature.

This dissertation focuses on the family of printers and booksellers descended from Bernardo Calderón. The family was active in Mexico from no later than 1581 to 1817, and this study focuses on the period from 1628 to 1760 when they were the most prominent. The central question is to understand how they navigated the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, how they operated as a business concern, and how were they related to broader society in New Spain. Organized into six chapters, the first focuses on Calderón’s background in Alcalá de Henares and Seville, Spain. The second focuses on Calderón’s brief nine-year career in Mexico, followed by an examination of the first decade following his death when the press was led by his widow, Paula de Benavides. Chapter four focuses on the growth and expansion of the enterprise during the period from 1650 to 1685, followed by a discussion of the economics of the book trade during the viceregal period. The final chapter examines a period of intense competition from 1720 to 1760, during which the book trade in New Spain underwent fundamental changes. / text

A study of the history of the book trade (printing, bookselling, stationery and publishing) in Leicester, from the medieval beginnings of the trade (parchment making etc. ) up to cl 850. The development of the book trade is examined in its local, regional and national contexts, including cultural, social and economic aspects, with the aim of contributing to the growing corpus of historical study of the provincial book trade in England, which has developed considerably over the last thirty years. Extensive use has been made of primary source material, not least the Borough Records of Leicester including the registers of freemen and apprentices, newspaper advertisements, extant locally-printed books and other material. More than three hundred book-trade individuals have been identified. The activities of the leading practitioners are explored, including the stock and services they provided, the economics of their trading activity, their standing in the town (many held civic office), and their interaction within the business community. The impact of the book trade and the printed word in Leicester are discussed, as are other significant aspects of the trade such as the importance of family businesses, the role of women, and the handing on of trade skills from master to apprentice. In the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth, the striking contrast between the conservatism of the old Corporation and the strident radicalism, and religious dissent, of many Leicester people provides a vibrant setting for the activities of booksellers, printers and newspaper publishers. Many of the town's leading book-trade practitioners were politically radical - an interesting and historically important dimension to the later development of the book trade in Leicester, to a degree seldom found elsewhere.

William Shakespeare is arguably the most famous and influential author in modern history. His plays make up a literary canon that has been translated into every language, is constantly being reproduced on the stage and on film and has persisted in popularity for centuries. Yet, Shakespeare’s first and most popular text is not a play, but the narrative poem, Venus and Adonis. The text that launched Shakespeare into popularity and gave rise to this cultural icon was a poem, rather than a play. But despite its initial success, Venus and Adonis is not a central feature of the modern literary canon and Shakespeare’s original role as a poet has been overshadowed by his achievements in theatre. This paper sets out to explore what happened to Shakespeare’s legacy in poetry by examining the commercial history and aesthetic form of two of Shakespeare’s poems: Venus and Adonis and the sonnets. I will address how the dramatic literary canon was created and why it revolves around Shakespeare as solely a playwright.

This volume discusses the 'book crisis' in anglophone Africa, paying particular attention to Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. It reviews the history of publishing, economic and cultural aspects of the crisis, its impact on authors and the nature of the readership.. / Dieser Band behandelt die 'Buch-Krise' im englischsprachigen Afrika mit besonderem Bezug auf Kenia, Nigeria und Simbabwe. Er betrachtet die Geschichte der Verlagswesens, der Wirtschaft und der kulturellen Aspekte der Krise, ihre Auswirkung auf Autoren und die Besonderheiten der Leser.

This thesis seeks to examine the nature of the intertwined networks of print, patronage and religion that existed within and across England and Scotland between 1580 and 1604, through the career of the English printer Robert Waldegrave. Multifaceted and complex, Waldegrave’s career spanned two countries, four decades and numerous controversies. To date scholars have engaged in a teleological narrative of his career, culminating in his involvement with the Marprelate press between April 1588/9. This focus on Waldegrave as a religious radical has coloured accounts of his English business and resulted in his Scottish career being disregarded by many. This thesis adds to the growing body of scholarship concerning printers and the print trade, illustrating the varied role Waldegrave played, both in relation to the texts he produced and within a broader trans-national context of print There are three major thematic areas of enquiry; whether Waldegrave’s characterization by contemporary commentators and subsequent scholars as a Puritan printer is accurate; what his career in Scotland between 1590 and 1603 reveals about the Scottish print trade, and finally the role and significance of the various networks of print, patronage and religion within which he operated in regards to his own career as well as in the broader context of early modern religious and commercial printing. Challenging the reductive interpretation of Waldegrave’s life and career, this thesis places the Marprelate episode within the wider framework of his English and Scottish careers, enabling traditional assumptions about his motivation and autonomy to be questioned and reevaluated. It will be shown that the accepted image of Waldegrave as a committed Puritan printer, developed and disseminated by his representation within the Marprelate tracts was actually a misrepresentation of his position and that the reality was far more nuanced. His choices were informed by commercial concerns and the various needs of the networks of print, patronage and religion within which he worked, which often limited his ability to promote the religious beliefs he held. The study of Waldegrave and his English contemporaries within the Scottish print trade expands our knowledge of the relationship between the print trades of England and Scotland and highlights how intertwined they were during this period. Waldegrave’s Scottish career, and the significance of his complicated relationship with his royal patron, James VI will be established and the wider impact and significance of Waldegrave’s appointment as Royal printer demonstrated. As he worked as a minor jobbing printer, a fugitive on a clandestine press and as the Royal Printer in Scotland Waldegrave is one of a small number of stationers whose career was extremely varied. Through the study of Waldegrave’s unique and multifaceted career it is therefore possible to trace and analyse the complex networks within which he, and his fellow stationers operated during the late-sixteenth century.

This dissertation deals with Swedish crime fiction and its successes on the Swedish book market in the early 2000s. The genre’s expansion, marketing and literary content is mapped and analysed in three studies that together paint a thorough picture of this literary phenomena in Swedish book trade. In study no 1 the development of the genre in Sweden in the last 40 years is discussed from a quantitative perspective. With the base in bibliographies of Swedish crime fiction publication trends are analysed in several ways and concerning topics such as genre growth, gender balance, publishing houses, successful authorships, bestsellers and library lending. The results include: a significant genre expansion in the 2000s; a great dominance for the genre on the bestseller charts in the 2000s; and a shift in the author group, from male dominance to even gender balance. In study no 2 the marketing of the genre is examined through an analysis of book covers, titles and other elements in the concrete packaging of just over 150 Swedish crime fiction paperbacks. With book history as an important theoretical influence book covers and other peritextual elements are understood as a significant part of the marketing of the genre, but also – and wider – as of crucial importance for how genres themselves are established, withheld and re-negotiated in the interplay between different actors in the society of literature – publishers, authors, booksellers, readers. In study no 3 a quantitative content analysis of 116 Swedish crime novels published 1998–2015 is used to chart and discuss recurring themes and tropes within the genre. Focus is primarily directed towards what is understood as the most central parts of crime fiction: murderers and their motives; methods used in committing murder; victims of murder; and detectives and other protagonists. The results include: a distinct dominance of female protagonists; a partial realism, where depictions of everyday life in general is realistic while the murder plots are spectacular and sensational; and a dominance of normality, where main characters and innocent victims confirms normality, while killers and unsympathetic victims are depicted as deviants in stark contrast with normality.