David Finkelstein - Böcker

This is a study of international print networks developed across the English-speaking world over a significant part of the long nineteenth century. The first study of its kind, it draws on unique sources from Australasia, North America, South Africa, the British Isles, and Ireland, to explore how printers interacted and shared trade and cultural identities across international boundaries during the period 1830-1914. Morality, mobility, mobilisation, and solidarity were central to how compositors and print trade workers defined themselves during this period. These themes are addressed in case studies on roving printers, striking printers, and creative printers. The case studies explore the cultural values and trade skills transmitted and embedded by such actors, the global networks that enabled print workers to travel across continents in search of work and experience, the trade actions reliant on mobilization and information-sharing across the printing world, and the creative ideas that printers shared through such means as memoirs, poetry, prose, and trade news contributions to print trade journals and other public outlets.

The Scottish publishing firm of William Blackwood & Sons, founded in 1804, was a major force in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British literary history, publishing a diverse group of important authors—including George Eliot, John Galt, Thomas de Quincey, Margaret Oliphant, Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, and John Buchan, among many others—in book form and in its monthly Blackwood’s Magazine. In The House of Blackwood, David Finkelstein exposes for the first time the successes and failures of this onetime publishing powerhouse. Finkelstein begins with a general history of the Blackwood firm from 1804 to 1920, attending to family dynamics over several generations, to their molding of a particular political and national culture, to the shaping of a Blackwood’s audience, and to the multiple causes for the firm’s decline in the decades before World War I. He then uses six case studies of authors—Conrad, Oliphant, John Hanning Speke, George Tompkyns Chesney, Charles Reade, and E. M. Forster—and their relationships with the publishing house. He mines the voluminous correspondence of the firm with its authors and, eventually, with the authors’ agents. The value of the archive Finkelstein studies is its completeness, the depth of the ledger material (particularly interesting given that the Blackwoods did much of their own printing), and the extraordinary longevity of the firm. A key value of Finkelstein’s account is his attention to the author/publisher/reader circuit that Robert Darnton emphasizes as the central focus of book history.

This collection of important new research in 19th-century media history represents some salient, recent developments in the field. Taking as its theme, the ways the media serves to define identities - national, ethnic, professional, gender, and textual, the volume addresses serials in the UK, the US, and Australia. High culture rubs shoulders with the popular press, text with image, feminist periodicals and masculine, gay, and domestic serials. Theory and history combine in research by scholars of international repute.

During the course of the nineteenth century, the British publishing industry was transformed as the commercial, technological and legal structures underpinning the production and distribution of books and periodicals changed rapidly. The period has long been viewed as having witnessed the birth of a mass reading public as educational reforms, revolutions in transport and communications, as well as the introduction of mechanised processes of production, increased the supply of printed matter and the demand for reading material. Books and periodicals became cheaper and the market for them increasingly international. New retail outlets emerged, and library provision of various kinds expanded. At the same time, changes in copyright legislation and the emerging professionalisation of authorship changed the way the publishing industry worked with the authors and other players in the book trade. This four-volume collection brings together contemporary source material that charts the nature, timing and impact of these changes, and explores some of the key contexts and debates of the period. Each volume will present a documentary account of changes in the publishing industry from four distinct perspectives: production, commercial and business structures, legal structures, and readers and markets. This title will be of great interest to students and scholars of history and literature.

This volume assembles documents that illustrate the changing structure of the British publishing industry in the nineteenth century. It charts the increasing separation of the functions of printing, publishing and retailing in the production and distribution of books, and the emergence of new economic models of publishing. For most of the period the book trade operated on a shortage of capital, depending upon fragile networks of credit and debt which could lead, as in the financial crisis of 1825-6, to the collapse of many businesses. The volume documents how the structures of the industry impacted upon the pricing structure of books and periodicals and charts the slow emergence of a mass-market for print. Major points of contention such as the ‘taxes on knowledge’ and the battle over legal deposit are traced, along with recurring debates over discounting and underselling. The volume focuses on key moments such as the controversy over free trade in the 1840s and 1850s and the debates over price protection which led to the formation of the Net Book Agreement in 1900.

This volume brings together key documents covering technologies of production that affected the British publishing industry during a significant period of change. It focuses in particular on key source material related to industrialisation of print production, which saw major leaps forward as mechanised innovations increased the speed, efficiency and delivery of texts through the production process. The introduction of iron, steam and other forms of rotary power presses improved the output of the print room over the century. Alongside this came improvements in typesetting and associated tasks, with the adoption of linotype and monotype casting machines. Changes in available methods of reproducing illustrations such as the development of lithographic printing processes and, in the second half of the century, photographic processes such as half-tone and photogravure, enabled wider incorporation of illustrations into periodicals and books. Such technological changes also fed organisational changes within the print and publishing trade. National unions for the print trade were established in the middle of the century to adapt to new working conditions, and engaged in robust debates about technology and its effect in the workplace.

This volume assembles documents that illustrate the changing relations between authors and publishers in the nineteenth century, and the impact of copyright reform on publishing practices. The enormous expansion in the scale and variety of the marketplace for print after 1815 provided new opportunities for authors and prompted debates over intellectual property and the working relations between authors and publishers. The volume documents the impact of these changes on the publishing industry and its markets, focusing on key moments such as the emergence of the professional literary agent in the late 1870s and the formation of the Incorporated Society of Authors in 1883. It also includes key contemporary material related to copyright and intellectual property, which were major battle grounds affecting nineteenth-century textual circulation, author/publisher relations, financial sustainability, competitiveness in international markets, and industrial relations. The British publishing industry’s attempts to control piracy and unrestricted circulation of their titles in the US and elsewhere found expression in a number of pressure campaigns, formal government commissions, legal acts, and contributions to public debate through journal articles, pamphlets, speeches, and newspaper accounts, of which a representative selection are featured in this volume.

This volume documents how the nineteenth-century British publishing industry responded to and helped shape changes in readership and reading markets in the period. Focusing on broad social, economic and cultural changes, it traces the impact of improvements in transport and communication networks, which dramatically affected the production, distribution and retail of books and periodicals, and the implementation of the Education Acts of 1870 and 1871 which forced publishers to direct their attention to new markets and adopt cheaper publishing formats. The growth of circulating libraries, the revolution in serial and part publication, and the spread of railway bookstalls are among the many topics addressed in this volume which concludes with a section that documents the new pressures of censorship that arose as educational reforms provoked anxieties over the spread of cheap ‘pernicious’ literature.

Following on from the widely successful first volume, this second edition has been updated and expanded to create an essential collection of writings examining different aspects of the history of books and print culture.Arranged in thematic sections, bringing together a wide range of contributors, and featuring introductions to each section, this new edition:contains more extracts covering issues of gender, material culture and bibliographical mattershas a brand new section on the future of the book in the electronic ageexamines different aspects of book history including: the development of the book, spoken words to written texts, the commodifcation of books, and the power and profile of readers.This pioneering book is a vital resource for all those involved in publishing studies, library studies, book history and also those studying English literature, cultural studies, sociology and history.

Following on from the widely successful first volume, this second edition has been updated and expanded to create an essential collection of writings examining different aspects of the history of books and print culture.Arranged in thematic sections, bringing together a wide range of contributors, and featuring introductions to each section, this new edition:contains more extracts covering issues of gender, material culture and bibliographical mattershas a brand new section on the future of the book in the electronic ageexamines different aspects of book history including: the development of the book, spoken words to written texts, the commodifcation of books, and the power and profile of readers.This pioneering book is a vital resource for all those involved in publishing studies, library studies, book history and also those studying English literature, cultural studies, sociology and history.

This second edition of An Introduction to Book History provides a comprehensive critical introduction to the development of the book and print culture. Each fully revised and updated chapter contains new material and covers recent developments in the field, including:The Postcolonial BookCensorship by states and religionsSocial History, and the recognition of underrepresentation of its value to book history studiesContemporary publishingEach section begins with a summary of the chapter’s aims and contents, followed by a detailed discussion of the relevant issues, concluding with a summary of the chapter and points to ponder. Sections include:the history of the bookorality to Literacyliteracy to printingauthors, authorship and authorityprinters, booksellers, publishers, agentsreaders and readingthe future of the book. An Introduction to Book History is an ideal introduction to this exciting field of study, and is designed as a companion text to The Book History Reader.

This second edition of An Introduction to Book History provides a comprehensive critical introduction to the development of the book and print culture. Each fully revised and updated chapter contains new material and covers recent developments in the field, including:The Postcolonial BookCensorship by states and religionsSocial History, and the recognition of underrepresentation of its value to book history studiesContemporary publishingEach section begins with a summary of the chapter’s aims and contents, followed by a detailed discussion of the relevant issues, concluding with a summary of the chapter and points to ponder. Sections include:the history of the bookorality to Literacyliteracy to printingauthors, authorship and authorityprinters, booksellers, publishers, agentsreaders and readingthe future of the book. An Introduction to Book History is an ideal introduction to this exciting field of study, and is designed as a companion text to The Book History Reader.

In this volume a range of distinguished contributors provide an original analysis of the book in Scotland during a period that has been until now greatly under-researched and little understood.The issues covered by this volume include the professionalisation of publishing, its scale, technological developments, the role of the state, including the library service, the institutional structure of the book in Scotland, industrial relations, union activity and organisation, women and the Scottish book, and the economics of publishing. Separate chapters cover Scottish publishing and literary culture, publishing genres, the art of print culture, distribution, and authors and readers. The volume also includes an innovative use of illustrative case studies.

This Companion showcases the latest research into British colonial periodicals by leading scholars in the field. The first ever large-scale attempt to gather into one volume research on British colonial periodicals, the chapters in this volume analyse the fundamental role played by colonial periodicals in sustaining as well as contesting the economic, political and cultural hegemony of the British Empire from its inception to its fall. The volume considers both periodicals published in Britain for colonial consumption and those published in British colonies and dominions.

A definitive account of newspaper and periodical press history across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales covering 1650 to the present dayAt various points over the last 400 years, key political, economic and social processes, have worked to hinder or promote the expansion and dissemination of information across Britain and Ireland via newspapers and periodicals. In a contemporary era characterized by debate on the limits of devolution and the potential of independence we need to assess the roles played by newspapers and periodicals in enabling national and regional identities to emerge, cohere and diversify over time. How can we best identify the most significant of these processes? What were the critical flashpoints in their development? How have they marked the place of the press in civic society? What are the consequences in considering these within the general history of the British and Irish press? This three-volume prestige project addresses these matters, offering a definitive account of newspaper and periodical press activity across Britain and Ireland between 1650 to the present day and addressing questions related to four key research interests: general social/ political history; newspaper and periodical history; cultural history; and technological history.

A thorough account of newspaper and periodical press history in Britain and Ireland from 1800–1900Provides a comprehensive history of the British and Irish Press from 1800-1900, reflected upon in 60 substantive chapters and focused case studiesSets out to capture the cross-regional and transnational dimension of press history in nineteenth-century Britain and IrelandOffers unique and important reassessments of nineteenth-century British and Irish press and periodical media within social, cultural, technological, economic and historical contextsThis is a unique collection of essays examining nineteenth-century British and Irish newspaper and periodical history during a key period of change and development. It covers an important point of expansion in periodical and press history across the four nations of Great Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), concentrating on cross-border and transnational comparisons and contrasts in nineteenth-century print communication.Designed to provide readers with a clear understanding of the current state of research in the field, in addition to an extensive introduction, it includes forty newly commissioned chapters and case studies exploring a full range of press activity and press genres during this intense period of change. Along with keystone chapters on the economics of the press and periodicals, production processes, readership and distribution networks, and legal frameworks under which the press operated, the book examines a wide range of areas from religious, literary, political and medical press genres to analyses of overseas and émigré press and emerging developments in children’s and women’s press.

A thorough account of newspaper and periodical press history in Britain and Ireland from 1800 1900Provides a comprehensive history of the British and Irish Press from 1800-1900, reflected upon in 60 substantive chapters and focused case studiesSets out to capture the cross-regional and transnational dimension of press history in nineteenth-century Britain and IrelandOffers unique and important reassessments of nineteenth-century British and Irish press and periodical media within social, cultural, technological, economic and historical contextsThis is a unique collection of essays examining nineteenth-century British and Irish newspaper and periodical history during a key period of change and development. It covers an important point of expansion in periodical and press history across the four nations of Great Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), concentrating on cross-border and transnational comparisons and contrasts in nineteenth-century print communication. Designed to provide readers with a clear understanding of the current state of research in the field, in addition to an extensive introduction, it includes forty newly commissioned chapters and case studies exploring a full range of press activity and press genres during this intense period of change. Along with keystone chapters on the economics of the press and periodicals, production processes, readership and distribution networks, and legal frameworks under which the press operated, the book examines a wide range of areas from religious, literary, political and medical press genres to analyses of overseas and emigre press and emerging developments in children's and women's press.

The declaration of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 presented American foreign policy officials with two dilemmas: how to deal with the communist government on the mainland and what to do about Chiang Kai-shek’s holdout Nationalist regime on Taiwan. By early 1950 these questions were pressing hard upon U.S. civilian and military planners and policy makers, for it appeared that the Red Army was preparing to invade the island. Most observers believed that nothing short of American military intervention would preclude a communist victory on Taiwan. How U.S. officials grappled with the question of what to do about Taiwan is at the heart of this study. Prior to the publication of this book, much of the historical literature on this critical period in U.S. policy toward China concentrated on the question of relations with the new regime in Beijing. A focus on those debates has largely overshadowed the concomitant policy debates that centred around the question of how to deal with the Nationalist regime on Taiwan. As this study shows, the two issues were inextricably linked and developing a Taiwan policy was no less difficult or controversial. Heavily informed by an analysis of declassified U.S. government documents and other primary sources, this history strongly suggests that had North Korea not invaded the south in June 1950 the U.S. would not have intervened to save Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan from near-certain invasion. Beyond the narrative itself, this volume is also a case study into the complex and sometimes messy processes by which foreign policy is made. It explores the tensions that existed within the Truman administration between the State Department and various newly-created entities such as the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council. Indeed, the history of policymaking for China and Taiwan in 1949-50 is also a case study in the early development of the post-war interagency system. It also underscores the tensions between the Executive and Legislative branches in the development of foreign policy. The study also brings to light little-discussed and often uncomfortable issues in Taiwan history, some of which still have relevance to politics on the island even today. These include the legacies of the Japanese colonial experience, the post-war Nationalist occupation, and the early stirrings of the “Formosan” independence movement, to name just a couple. Today, U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains a highly-charged and fundamentally divisive issue in U.S.-China relations — especially the security dimensions of that policy. And even today U.S. Taiwan policy is still subject to partisan politics in Washington as well as in Taipei. For those who still grapple with this issue, this volume presents the roots of the dilemma and essential background reading.