A History of British Publishing

Thoroughly revised, restructured and updated, A History of British Publishing covers six centuries of publishing in Britain from before the invention of the printing press, to the electronic era of today.

John Feather places Britain and her industries in an international marketplace and examines just how ‘British’, British publishing really is. Considering not only the publishing industry itself, but also the areas affecting, and affected by it, Feather traces the history of publishing books in Britain and examines:

• education
• politics
• technology
• law
• religion
• custom
• class
• finance, production and distribution
• the onslaught of global corporations.

Specifically designed for publishing and book history courses, this is the only book to give an overall history of British publishing, and will be an invaluable resource for all students of this fascinating subject.

This comprehensive history (first published in 1987) covers the whole period in which books have been printed in Britain. Though Gutenberg had the edge over Caxton, England quickly established itself in the forefront of the international book trade. The slow process of copying manuscripts gave way to an increasingly sophisticated trade in the printed word which brought original literature, translations, broadsheets and chapbooks and even the Bible within the purview of an increasingly broad slice of society. Powerful political forces continued to control the book trade for centuries before the principle of freedom of opinion was established. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the competition from pirated USA editions - where there were no copyright laws - provided a powerful threat to the trade. This period also saw the rise of remaindering, cheap literature, and many other 'modern' features of the trade. The author surveys all these developments, bringing his history up to the present age.