The British Publishing Industry, 1815-1914 - Volume IV: Publishers, Markets, Readers

This volume documents how the publishing industry responded to and helped to shape changes in readership and reading markets in the period, tracing the impact of broad social and cultural changes in, for example, transport and communication, and education and literacy. Improvements in transport and postal and communication networks dramatically affected the production, distribution and retail of books and periodicals, establishing new modes of acquisition and consumption of texts. The volume documents in particular the impact of railway expansion and the spread of railway bookstalls and increased demand for cheaper books. The expansion of spaces and outlets through which published texts could be circulated also occupied a great deal of commentary. The rise of the circulating library, the development of commercial and free public libraries, and the implementation of the Education Acts of 1870 and 1871, required publishers to direct attention to new markets and demands. Such demands created pressure to adopt new patterns of publishing formats, prices and genre categories: it sparked a revolution in serial and part publication, a growth of cheap series publishing at the end of the period, and shifts in the demand for key subject areas such as religion, educational textbooks, information publishing, and children’s books. New pressures of censorship also arose as educational reforms provoked anxieties over the spread of cheap ‘pernicious’ literature. The volume illustrates key moments in these developments through documentary material drawn from contemporary books, newspapers and periodicals; library and bookseller records; and government publications and reports.