Print Beyond the Book

Abstract

Print Beyond the Book Norbert Schürer James Raven, Bookscape: Geographies of Printing and Publishing in London before 1800 (London: The British Library, 2014). Pp. xvi+208208. $85.00. James Raven, Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England (Wood-bridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2014). Pp. xiv+334. $29.95. It is a rare occasion when two books in the same field of study that perfectly complement each other are published at the same time, and it is even rarer when those two volumes are by the same author. Now, however, we have the good fortune of two such works by eminent book historian James Raven: Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England, which surveys the publishing industry in that period, and Bookscape, which examines more specifically the geography of the London publishing industry. [End Page 94] Publishing Business is perhaps a slightly awkward title, but there is a reason for that choice. Raven is not just interested in the publishing business itself—who was printing what, how, when, and why—but more importantly in how business in general was published: that is, what impact the print revolution of the long eighteenth century had on trade and business. As a matter of fact, this is one of the most important and interesting arguments of Publishing Business; in example after compelling example, Raven demonstrates how the economy was transformed by the use of print. This is connected to the book’s second significant argument: namely, that print must be understood in the widest sense. Most scholars, Raven maintains, focus on printed material in the form of books, newspapers, and pamphlets, but actually the vast majority took more ephemeral forms. These materials, also known as jobbing printing, are now often lost or not really recognized as print—and therefore hard to locate in archives—but their inclusion might change the way scholars understand even the businesses of worthies such as the Bowyers and the Strahans. This in turn leads to a third central argument of Publishing Business, which is that a recognition of jobbing printing will necessarily entail greater recognition for printers in the provinces, whose main business lay not in books, newspapers, or pamphlets but in more ephemeral material. After three chapters in which Raven sets the framework for his argument, the following six take the reader through detailed and convincing series of case studies. For instance, trade and government needed a variety of printed notices, including “vagrant passes and settlement examinations, blank printed forms for military enlistment, local returns of arms, warrants and musters, forms for monthly statistics of officers and inmates at orphan hospitals and other institutions, and a multitude of apprenticeship forms, including those for foundling hospitals” (76). The government furthermore used printed forms to service labor, collect tax and duties, administer wills, and run the lottery. In other words, government needed print to publicize itself, but was also forced to transform in the process of publication. Similarly, business could not have survived without printed ledgers (which revolutionized accounting practices), stock certificates, loan documents, insurance forms, standard policies, and banknotes—Raven asserts that “business blanks” made trade more trustworthy, supporting the eighteenth-century consumer revolution. Information necessary to conduct trade was also circulated in print: “first, reports or ‘currents’ of local economies, including general and specialized commodity price currents, foreign exchange rate currents, money currents and stock exchange currents; second, reports on overseas trade and shipping, including marine lists and general and specialized (‘small’) bills of entry; and third, combinations of two or more elements from both types of reports and published in the same newspaper” (149). Printed guides and manuals taught individuals how to use all the other printed material, and printed almanacs and pocketbooks helped them to organize their lives. Thus, Raven concludes, print created economic confidence and conformities of practice by demonstrating “knowledge, accuracy, efficiency, security, authority and . . . trust” (256). There was extensive debate regarding the role of print over the course of the eighteenth century—conducted, of course, in print. By the end of the century, print had created norms that were so pervasive that today it is sometimes difficult to see them as constructed. These norms can be considered part of social control and regimentation...