
Contents
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The Book Trade The Book Trade
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Markets Markets
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Authorship Authorship
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Censorship Censorship
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Reading Reading
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Print and Revolution Print and Revolution
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The Triumph of the Book The Triumph of the Book
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9 Enlightenment and Revolution
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Published:March 2023
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Abstract
This chapter surveys the development and consequences of European and North American printing and publishing from the early eighteenth century until the mechanization of printing starting in the 1820s. Although the technologies of book making changed little, the economic organization and political and legal framework of the book trade underwent fundamental transformation, as did relations between authors and readers. An increasingly capitalist market, characterized by cut-throat competition and widespread piracy, led to the enactment of the first modern copyright laws. The market as a whole expanded, with new print genres, and notably the newspaper and the novel, gaining in popularity. Readers developed intensely emotional and intimate connections both to the characters depicted in novels and to their authors, prompting conservative critics to worry about the malign effects of ‘reading addiction’—especially on women. By contrast, for leaders of the French Revolution print appeared as an agent of political and social liberation. Freed from censorship and restrictive guild regulations, printing in revolutionary France expanded to meet a voracious demand for news and opinion, now dominated by political journals and short topical works. In the wake of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, a sharp distinction emerged between popular print genres, including the periodical press which came under close surveillance from the conservative Restoration regimes, and books which were generally exempt from censorship and protected by copyright. In post-Revolutionary Europe a veritable culture of the book took shape, organized around the figure of the author and supported by the power of the state.
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