Books for Sale: Advertising and Patronage in Late Elizabethan England

Abstract

The final decade of Elizabeth I's reign witnessed a sharp decrease in the number and generosity of literary patrons. This decline, however, did not cripple the rapidly growing book market. To offset the loss of potential income from wealthy benefactors, printers, publishers, and authors courted a new group of patrons-the growing number of individual readers in and around London. The printing press allowed advertisements, usually found on the title page or placed in the preliminary matter, direct access to potential customers, altering the increasingly archaic system of patronage. Printers and publishers employed many sophisticated forms of advertising, attempting to compensate for the decline in revenue while creating a new patronage system, a system where courting a large number of consumers became more important than pleasing an individual aristocrat.