This thesis examines the central figures of the mid-eighteenth century book trade and places them within the broader historical moment by exploring booksellers as individuals in Hanoverian society as well as principal actors in the proliferation of printed material during the mid-century period. It argues that booksellers of the mid-eighteenth century were instrumental in cultivating the widespread fascination with books within Hanoverian society. During the mid-eighteenth century period, Britons enjoyed an unprecedented array of readily available titles, and this dramatic increase in published material available for consumption owed much to the activities of the booksellers in the literary marketplace.
The lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 made it considerably easier for Britons of the middling ranks to set up book businesses, resulting in an increasingly competitive book trade throughout the eighteenth century. By the 1730s, the trade was in a state of flux, the initial cohort of post-1695 booksellers was leaving the trade, creating a particularly lucrative market for newcomers. In the years that followed, many new booksellers, including Robert Dodsley and Andrew Millar, established successful shops founded on business principles. The activities of these booksellers shifted principles of the book trade from the literary merits to the profitability of a title. Through publishing catalogues and advertisements, booksellers promoted books as fashionable commodities and offered features that emphasized the novelty of each edition, such as paper, art, and additional chapters.
Profitability permeated the mid-eighteenth century trade, as it shaped the manner in which booksellers marketed their titles to the literate and book-buying public, as well as the way booksellers understood their own copyright property. Appeals for further protection of their non-traditional forms of property culminated in the landmark Donaldson v. Becket legal decision of 1774 that abolished the traditional concept of perpetual copyright and resulted in further changes in the book trade of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In addition to its influence on concepts of property, the commercial book trade encouraged Britons, including women, to both produce and to consume literature. In transforming the literary marketplace, booksellers of the mid-eighteenth century fostered the development of a discerning book buying public craving literary commodities of all sorts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/27997 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Larin, Amy Frances |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 137 p. |
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