London and the Country

Abstract

During the early months of 1695, both houses of Parliament devoted some time to the need to renew the Printing Act, which was due to expire at the end of the session. This legislation, in force since 1662 with a gap between 1679 and 1685, had replaced the earlier executive decrees for the control of the press. It regulated many aspects of the book trade, with the overall effect of confining commercial printing,and hence publishing, to London. For over two centuries, the London trade had exercised a collective monopoly over the production of books in England, and although a number of bookshops existed in the provinces, they were dependent upon London suppliers. From the late sixteenth century onwards, there is copious evidence for the existence of a provincial book trade. There were indeed few towns of any size in which books were not available. Among the examples are a trader in Chester in 1593, Christopher Hunt in Exeter from 1593, and William Corbett of Newcastle- upon- Tyne who died in 1626. Shops also existed in the two university towns, although these were, of course, wholly atypical of the trade as a whole. Even outside Oxford and Cambridge, however, there were some bookshops with substantial stocks. In 1644, John Awdley of Hull had well over two hundred books in stock, including a wide range of classical texts, schoolbooks, and theological works both learned and popular. By the end of the century, even the record of imprints, which is only the tip of the iceberg of the country trade, shows a wide spread of booksellers throughout the country.