The History of Printing and Print Culture: contexts and controversies

John Hinks

Centre for Printing History and Culture, Birmingham City University, UK

[Link]@[Link]

Centre for Printing History and Culture, Birmingham City University, Room 423, Parkside
Building, Cardigan Street, Birmingham B4 7BD, UK.

Biography

John Hinks, formerly Director of Libraries and Information Service with Leicestershire County
Council, took early retirement in 1997 and devoted more time to his longstanding interest in book
history. His doctoral research focused on the history of printing and the book trade in Leicester until
c.1850. Gaining his PhD from Loughborough University in 2002, he then worked as the Research
Fellow on the ‘British Book Trade Index on the Web’ project at the University of Birmingham until
2005, since when he has held an honorary fellowship at the Centre for Urban History at the University
of Leicester. He is currently also Honorary Research Fellow in Printing History and Culture at
Birmingham City University, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for West Midlands
History, University of Birmingham. He has published widely on print culture and book trade history,
served several terms on the Council of the Bibliographical Society, chaired the Printing Historical
Society from 2010 to 2019. He is currently a member of the executive group of the Centre for Printing
History and Culture, a joint venture of Birmingham City University and the University of
Birmingham.

1
The History of Printing and Print Culture: contexts and controversies

Abstract

The history of printing and print culture is a dynamic and wide-ranging field of study, as the
articles in this special issue demonstrate. By way of background, this Introduction briefly
outlines the development of the field and highlights a number of controversial issues that have
arisen within it. Although often considered part of ‘the history of the book’ (or ‘book
history’), much of the history of printing is concerned with the quotidian production of non-
book material including a vast variety of ephemeral printed items known as ‘jobbing
printing’. Printed items, both books and ephemera, have made a significant contribution to the
history of the Midlands. In particular, printing played a key role in the industrial development
of the region and in the ‘Midlands Enlightenment’.

Keywords: printing history; print culture; book history; history of the book; printing revolution

The history of printing and print culture may seem on first encounter a narrow and rather

esoteric field of study. However, as the articles in this special issue demonstrate, it is in fact a

very wide-ranging field, full of interest for the specialist and non-specialist alike. The history

of printing (and let us avoid tedious repetition by taking this to include print culture) has been

studied for a long time now, from many different viewpoints, though at first not in a very

systematic way, resulting in a patchwork quilt of studies of people (printers, booksellers,

readers and many others), and of processes, machinery and typefaces. These have formed the

preoccupation of most printing historians; collectively they provide us with an understanding

of printing history from the perspective of the West—printing history being predominantly a

western preoccupation.

This piecemeal approach was brought together—to some extent at least—during the

latter half of the twentieth century when two related academic fields became established:

2
printing history and ‘book history’ (or ‘the history of the book’1). Printing history

encompassed the history of printing techniques, type and typography, the design of printed

material, printing technology and the social, cultural, industrial and economic histories of the

trade. Printing history tended to be practised by printers and typographers, while book history

presented itself as a more traditionally academic field, approached from a variety of angles by

historians—especially, but not only, cultural historians—and by literary scholars, librarians,

and many others. With hindsight, it seems surprising that the two fields were ever separate.

By the start of the present century, the boundaries between book history and printing

history had become less apparent, and the two fields have recently grown together into a

vibrant interdisciplinary field of study, approaching the topic of the creation (writing,

manuscript, print, typography, graphic design, illustration, binding, etc.), distribution

(publishing, bookselling, etc) and ‘consumption’ (reading and other methods of use) of the

printed word—not only books—from many different starting-points. It has grown into a

thriving interdisciplinary field of study, offering much to interest the non-academic reader as

well as the specialist. As Rick Poynor noted recently, commenting on the history of graphic

design—and it applies equally to printing history—the field:

urgently needs to be scrutinised by observers who are not graphic designers and can

bring other disciplinary perspectives, social and ethnic backgrounds and life

experiences to the discussion. While these initiatives might choose to take the nature

of practice into account to achieve a nuanced understanding, they should not be

constrained by professional concerns and objectives’.2

1
I make no distinction between these terms, as some try to do (especially in North America), which
just creates confusion. A seminal early text is L. Febvre and [Link], The Coming of the Book: the
impact of printing 1450-1800 (first published in French, 1957; English translation, London: Verso,
1976).
2
R. Poynor, ‘Two cheers for publishing’, Eye, 98 (2019), 100-101 (101).

3
 The aim of this Introduction is to set the scene for the articles that follow, by

mentioning briefly some of the key developments in the growth of printing history, while

highlighting some of the more controversial issues addressed by historians.3 One of the

earliest controversies was a recognition that there had been an over-emphasis on the study of

books and a consequent marginalization of the study of non-book items, documents and

ephemera. Printing and book history are now taken to encompass, quite rightly, the study of

many other printed (and handwritten) artefacts besides books, including both texts and

images.4 A great deal, probably a majority, of printing activity has always been devoted to the

production of items other than books; this is borne out by the articles in this issue, which

focus mainly on printed material other than books. Advertising, labels, handbills, commercial

stationery, and other ‘jobbing’ printing have been the staple of many printers’ work and

livelihood. James Raven has noted that the history of jobbing printing has often unwisely

been neglected: ‘jobbing was the life-blood of the printing house: it kept most printers going,

and, in turn, wide-ranging jobbing output transformed the ways in which people did business

and lived their lives’.5

Jobbing printing, in particular posters and display materials, are the focus of David

Osbaldestin’s innovative article on the early use of sans-serif types by some nineteenth-

century Midland printers. Guy Sjögren’s article makes imaginative use of a range of primary

sources to describe the importance of print to the marketing practices of Birmingham’s cut-

nail trade. Birmingham is also the focus of Jenny Gilbert’s article on the role of print in the

3
These footnotes include suggestions for further reading for those who wish to explore printing
history in more depth. In particular the seven volumes of The Cambridge History of the Book in
Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999-2019) are highly recommended.
4
See for example J. Hinks and C. Armstrong, eds., Text and Image in the City: Manuscript, Print and
Visual Culture in Urban Space (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017).
5
J. Raven, ‘Print culture and the perils of practice’, in The Perils of Print Culture: Book, Print and
Publishing History in Theory and Practice, ed by J. McElligot and E. Patten (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014), pp. 218-237 (p. 230).

4
wholesale fashion industry, which usefully discusses how clothing catalogues were used, as

well as how they were printed.

This economic historical role of printing dates back to the late eighteenth century. A

study that Maureen Bell and I carried out—to test the research potential of the online British

Book Trade Index (BBTI)7 —identified a significant increase in printing activity in provincial

industrial towns in the last quarter of the eighteenth century:

This noticeable ‘surge in printing’ most probably resulted from printers meeting the

growing needs of new and developing industries for printed matter (packaging,

publicity, commercial stationery), rather than from a significant increase in book

printing, though this rather broad assertion merits further research.8

The ‘printing surge’ in industrial towns was replicated in non-industrial towns after 1800.

Previously, during the ‘long eighteenth century’, an increasing number of provincial printers

had diversified into wide-ranging book-trade businesses, often including, alongside jobbing

printing, the publication of a newspaper, the sale of books, periodicals, patent medicines,

‘fancy goods’, and sometimes much more.9 Ann Ireland, a notable printer and bookseller in

Leicester, ran a thriving and very diverse business, as her advertisement from 1789 indicates:

At the Place of Sale may be had, Bibles and Common Prayer Books, in Morocco or

other Bindings. Account Books and Ledgers of all Sorts, Rul’d or Plain, and Bound to

7
BBTI was founded in 1983 by the late Professor Peter Isaac and his many collaborators. It was
developed as an online resource, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, at the
University of Birmingham (2002-05). Dr Maureen Bell was the project director; I was the research
fellow. BBTI is now hosted by the Bodleian Library: <[Link] [accessed 9
April 2020].
8
M. Bell and J. Hinks, ‘The English Provincial Book Trade: evidence from the British Book Trade
Index’ in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain [hereafter CHoBB], vol. V: 1695-1830
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 335-51 (p. 347). For more detail of the BBTI
research see J. Hinks and M. Bell, ‘The Book Trade in English Provincial Towns, 1700-1849: an
evaluation of evidence from the British Book Trade Index’, Publishing History, 57 (2005), 53-112.
9
J. Feather, The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985).

5
 any Pattern or Order. Stationary ware of all kinds. A Capital Collection of Maps and

Prints. Magazines, Reviews, and all other periodical publications. Blank Warrants and

Precedents for Coroners, High-Constables, Justices Clerks &c. &c.

Music, Rul’d Music Paper, Harpsichord lessons, new songs, with every Article in the

Musical Line. Letter Cases, Morocco, Spanish and Common Leather, with Straps or

Clasps. Schoolmasters, and Country Shopkeepers, may be supplied with School books

of all sorts – as also with Copy and Account Books, Quills, Pens, Black and Red Ink,

Writing Paper of the best Quality &c. &c. On the Lowest Terms. Printing in General,

executed with Neatness & Dispatch – And Books bound in a Neat and Firm Manner,

or in Elegant Bindings, on Reasonable Terms.10

The serious underplaying of the role of women in printing and the book trade is

another area of controversy and is, thankfully, at last being rectified. There is, however, some

way still to go: Sahar Afshar’s article is the only one in this issue to mention a prominent

book-trade female, Lorina Watkins, who ran a thriving bookbinding business in London in

the mid-nineteenth century. Ann Ireland was unusual: widowed at an early age she took over

her husband’s very successful business, ran it on her own until her son came of age, and then

ran it with him for many more years, although he was usually preoccupied with other

interests including local politics. It is clear that his mother remained the leading light of this

outstanding business, and that she developed it skilfully, diversifying into fashionable goods

and services. Apart from widows trading on their own account, it has become increasingly

clear that, despite their historical ‘invisibility’ (due to the prevailing social and cultural

10
Ann Ireland, A Catalogue of Books... (Leicester, 1789), title-page. (Cambridge University Library:
Munby Collection, d.136/2). For more information on Ann Ireland see J. Hinks, The History of the
Book Trade in Leicester to c.1850, unpublished PhD thesis (Loughborough University, 2002), pp.
220-230:
<[Link]
70/1> [accessed 9 April 2020].

6
practices of the time and especially to legislation which regarded a married woman as her

husband’s property), many women were very active in printing and bookselling businesses,

often taking a leading role in their day to day running while their husbands were busy with

other projects. In recent years, the study of the various roles of women in printing and the

book trades has gained ground. A major international conference, ‘Women in Print’, was

organized by the Centre for Printing History and Culture (CPHC) in Birmingham in 2018.11

The conference attracted many excellent speakers and two edited collections are in

preparation.12

When Ann Ireland’s husband died, his apprentice was turned over to her, making her

one of the relatively few female ‘masters’ of apprentices. The system of freedom and

apprenticeship was an important part of the printing and book trades, enabling skills to be

passed on between generations. In Leicester, one of the old incorporated towns, the system

was for the most part strictly enforced and diligently recorded.13 In the manorial towns, even

large ones like Birmingham, there was no such system and anyone could try their hand at

printing, bookselling, or any other trade for that matter. Caroline Archer-Parré’s article

discusses the importance not only of the passing on of printing skills but also, very

interestingly, of the transfer of skills between different occupations. In Birmingham, a

notable example of transferable skills was the connection between engraving (on metal

11
CPHC is a joint initiative between Birmingham City University and the University of Birmingham
and consists of researchers, heritage professionals and librarians. It seeks to encourage research into
all aspects and periods of printing history and culture, as well as education and training into the art
and practice of printing: <[Link] [accessed 9 April 2020].
12
Women in Print 1: design and (re)construction of personal histories ed by R. Roberto and A.
Alexiou; Women in Print 2: design and (re)construction of personal histories ed by H. S. Williams
and C. Moog (Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd, forthcoming, in their ‘Printing History and Culture’ series,
sponsored by CPHC).
13
The system evolved from the medieval Merchant Guild of the town. See J. Hinks, ‘Freedom and
Apprenticeship Records as a Source for Book Trade History’, Book Trade History Group Newsletter,
41 (December 2001): <[Link]
networks-files/freedom-and-apprenticeship> [accessed 9 April 2020].

7
goods, especially guns) and printing. John Grayson’s article discusses another special skill,

that of transfer printing onto enamelled artefacts. This is a fascinating story, informed not

only by Grayson’s historical research but also by his practical experience of carrying out

some of the craft processes discussed.

Another controversy has been the contested definition and status of ‘print culture’ and

its relationship with traditional printing history (with its emphasis on technology and design

aspects). Print culture is concerned primarily with the social and cultural impact of the

products of the printing press. However, the fact that there were books and other printed

items around in a particular place and time does not of itself constitute print culture:

[…] print culture is not simply defined by the presence of books in a society, but in a

widely diffused social knowledge of, and familiarity with, books and with the culture

of buying, borrowing, lending, reading and handling these physical items.14

As James Raven explains:

The very use of the term ‘print culture’ is problematic and should remind those who

concentrate upon historical aspects of the ‘history of the book’ (rather than critical

bibliographical studies) that historians start with people, study people and make

conclusions about people.15

These caveats are eminently sensible but it is worth adding that many historians, myself

included, have never had any problem with the concept of print culture. The name of the

Centre for Printing History and Culture was carefully chosen to include the history of print

culture alongside other aspects of printing history. Each of the Centre’s stated aims includes

print culture:

14
Perils of Print Culture, p. 5.
15
Raven, ‘Print culture and the perils of practice’, p. 218.

8
 • To provide a local, regional, national and international means of exchanging

information, skills and expertise in printing history and culture;

• To engage in and support ground-breaking interdisciplinary research into printing

history and culture;

• To seek partnerships between universities, heritage organisations, independent

scholars, businesses and practitioners to sponsor and encourage the investigation and

understanding of printing history and culture;

• To promote the transfer and exchange of knowledge of printing history and culture

amongst individuals and within communities and institutions.16

The boundaries of printing history—and print culture for that matter—are wonderfully

fluid: print has connected historically, and continues to do so, in various ways to so many

aspects of life that to build barriers around its study would be counterproductive. Books per

se are considered historically significant primarily because they helped to spread ideas. This

was true of manuscript books long before the invention of printing brought about a huge

increase in the number of books produced, gradually lowered their cost, and also,

importantly, enabled scholars and other readers to compare and refer to books in a much

more precise way (assuming they were using the same edition of a particular text) than had

ever been possible with handwritten copies. Uniform pagination and annotation within a

single printed edition generally enabled leading scholars to correspond with international

contacts, citing specific parts of a text, plus notes and references, in a much more precise way

than had ever been possible in the age of manuscript. Erasmus of Rotterdam is the example

par excellence of the early modern scholar making imaginative and effective use of printed

texts within a dynamic network of other scholars throughout Europe. At the same time he was

16
<[Link] [accessed 9 April 2020].

9
creatively using the medium of print to construct his own ‘image’ in what seems a very

modern way.17

While the new technology of printing undoubtedly gave a boost to scholarly activities

and made a considerable contribution to the spread of knowledge, it does need to be borne in

mind that some of the new-fangled printed books of the fifteenth century also had the more

negative effect of entrenching old and outdated ideas which might have been better left

behind in the past. Yet another controversy: there was for some time an over-emphasis on the

history of scholarly books. Important though these were, the printing press also helped many

kinds of popular culture to develop and thrive, through the production of cheap literature,

such as chapbooks, songsters and ballad-sheets, as well as posters and handbills advertising

popular theatrical, musical and sporting events.18

Did all this new activity constitute a ‘printing revolution’? For some time, this

question proved highly controversial. The transition from manuscript to print culture during

the late medieval and early modern periods understandably holds a particular fascination. The

gradual but steady increase in literacy, together with improvements in education – combined

with technological advances which brought about the development of printing – mark a

significant cultural shift in history, but it was not one that happened overnight. Scholars of

manuscript studies point out that the introduction of printing did not supersede the production

of handwritten texts at one fell swoop. Countering the assertions of those he called ‘print

17
L. Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: the Construction of Charisma in Print (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1993).
18
Early exceptions were two very influential studies: R. D. Altick, The English Common Reader: a
social history of the mass reading public 1800-1900 (Chicago University Press, 1957) and V. E.
Neuburg, Popular Literature: a History and Guide: from the beginning of printing to the year 1897
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977). Altick’s subtitle is misleading, as his first three chapters
cover earlier periods. More recently, much has been published about cheap and popular print; see for
example a special issue of Publishing History, 70 (2011).

10
triumphalists’, Harold Love argued convincingly that ‘the advent of the press did not

extinguish older methods of publication through manuscript’.19

As so often happens with past controversies, viewed from a distance in time, it can be

appreciated that both sides of the argument are to some extent significantly correct.20 The

emergence of a culture of print in Britain, and in Europe as a whole, may have been

evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but this does not negate the persuasive arguments of

Elizabeth Eisenstein, a distinguished champion of the ‘printing revolution’ hypothesis.21

Some of the features of print culture which she describes can be identified in provincial

England. However, Eisenstein’s inspirational but sometimes sweeping assertions benefit from

being tempered by other views, including those of Adrian Johns.22 By examining the book

trade and its internal relationships in greater depth than Eisenstein, he argues that ‘far from

being a coherent and revolutionary agent of change, the printed book in early modern Europe

was an unstable and malleable medium susceptible to a wide range of influences from far

beyond its own sphere’.23 The printing revolution may have been somewhat less coherent

than Eisenstein suggests, but there can be no doubt that the printing press was a powerful

agent of change – and remains so even in the present age of digital communication. Signs of

the emergence of print in the English Midlands point to an uneven, almost leisurely, process

but, once it had taken hold, the impact of print was surely ‘revolutionary’ by any definition.

19
H. Love, The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England
(revised edition, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998; first published by Oxford
University Press, 1993), pp. 3-4.
20
See for example D. McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
21
E. L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), an abridged edition of Eisenstein’s magnum opus, The Printing Press as an
Agent of Change: communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979).
22
A. Johns, The Nature of the Book: print and knowledge in the making. (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1998).
23
J. Feather, ‘Revolutions Revisited’ (review of A. Johns, The Nature of the Book), SHARP News,
vol. 8, no. 4, (Autumn 1999), 10.

11
Interestingly, Eisenstein discusses in a later essay the term ‘revolution’ in relation to the

spread of printing:

What has happened to the term revolution may be taken as an indication of the kinds

of problems that are produced by the cumulative effects of print. For the term has

itself been overloaded – made to bear the burden of three distinctively different

models of change: circular movement, abrupt rupture, continuous development. Given

the workings of print culture, any attempt to limit usage at this point is not only

unlikely to succeed, but is also likely to be counterproductive...24

She also points to the use of the phrase The Long Revolution by Raymond Williams,25 as the

title of his seminal study of the spread of literacy, and indicates that she intends ‘revolution’,

as applied to printing, to imply a similar, long-term though far-reaching change.26 In addition

to clarifying Eisenstein’s terminology, this reminds us of the key factor of literacy and its

spread, without which a printing revolution, however defined, could never have happened.

Eisenstein was also correct in asserting that the coming of printing played a key role in three

European movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the birth of modern science.27

The new technology of printing arrived in England firstly in London and only

gradually spread to the provinces. William Caxton, the leading English merchant in the Low

Countries, having spent some time in Cologne, where he realised the opportunities offered by

the new craft of printing, returned to his native land in 1476 and set up the first British

printing press in Westminster.28 His successors moved a short distance to the east into the

24
E. L. Eisenstein, ‘On Revolution and the Printed Word’, in Revolution in History, ed by R. Porter
and M. Teich, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 186-205, (p. 189).
25
R. Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961).
26
Eisenstein, ‘On Revolution and the Printed Word’, pp. 187-88.
27
I avoid the term ‘Scientific Revolution’, an even more vigorously contested term than ‘printing
revolution’.
28
L. Hellinga, William Caxton and Early Printing in England (London: British Library, 2010).
Caxton was in Cologne from 1471 to 1472, where he commissioned the printing of three Latin books.

12
City of London, where the area of Fleet Street and St Paul’s soon became the principal

national centre for the production and distribution of books. Fleet Street later became

synonymous with the newspaper press, a position it held until the late twentieth century. The

provincial newspaper press is a popular field of historical study, given a refreshing twist in

the article by Andrew J. H. Jackson, Claudia Capancioni, Elaine Johnson and Sian Hope-

Johnson. Their original and entertaining article discusses the origins of women’s football,

using the local press of Lincoln as their evidence of some very varied attitudes to the

emergence of the sport in the early years of the twentieth century.29

Any study of British printing needs to acknowledge that Britain lagged behind

mainland Europe:

Printing was slow to come to England. By the time the first book printed in England

came off a small press in an outbuilding of Westminster Abbey in mid-1476, the art of

printing with movable type had been developing on the continent of Europe for about

twenty years, and the new technique, perceived as almost magical, was beginning to

change the world for ever.30

Printing in the Midlands, as in other provincial areas, had a leisurely start. In 1577 Mary I

granted a charter to the Stationers’ Company which benefitted the London-based stationers

and printers by restricting printing to London and the two university towns of Oxford and

Cambridge. However, as Colin Clair notes in his standard history of British printing:

At this early stage of printing, some merchants commissioned books, acting in effect as publishers.
Caxton was never a ‘hands-on’ printer but an innovative entrepreneur and translator.
29
For the history of the provincial newspaper press see H. Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English
Society 1695-1855 (Harlow: Longman, 2000) and I. Cawood and L. Peters, eds, Print, Politics and the
Provincial Press in Modern Britain (Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd, 2019).
30
Hellinga, William Caxton, p. 1.

13
 at the time this made little difference, for what printing there had been elsewhere had

already ceased, and the monopoly granted to the Stationers’ Company did not result in

the closing of any provincial presses. The literate population was so small in most

provincial towns at that time that, apart from service books for the churches, there was

little scope for a printer. Up to 1557 printing had been introduced into ten towns

outside London; these were Oxford, St. Albans, York, Cambridge, Tavistock,

Abingdon, Ipswich, Worcester, Canterbury and Norwich.31

Following the Restoration, new legislation meant that provincial printing was further

restricted until 1695, when the Printing (Licensing) Act was allowed to lapse, although there

is evidence of books, both handwritten and printed, being owned, bought and sold in the

Midlands long before local printing was permitted.32 Some of these books were in Latin and

many were imported from mainland Europe.

Following the lifting of restrictions in 1695, printing gradually became established in

many towns in the Midlands and the rest of the country. It is surely not entirely coincidental

that this growth of provincial printing coincides with what Peter Borsay identified as the

‘English Urban Renaissance’, a process in which the printing press played a significant role.33

As James Raven observes:

Outside London, the rapid growth of many old market towns, as well as many new

settlements, provided the crucial stimulus to the book trade of the period. This is the

31
C. Clair, A History of Printing in Britain (London, Cassell, 1966), p. 112.
32
My own research on printing and the book trade in Leicester found several such examples: Hinks,
History of the Book Trade in Leicester.
33
P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town 1660-1770
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also J. Hinks and C. Armstrong, eds.,The English
Urban Renaissance Revisited, edited by (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2018), which includes a very useful essay by Borsay, reviewing his urban renaissance hypothesis after
a quarter-century or so. For Birmingham, see J. Hinks, ‘Baskerville’s Birmingham: printing and the
English urban renaissance’ in John Baskerville: art and industry of the Enlightenment, ed by C.
Archer-Parré and M. Dick (Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 2017), pp. 25-41.

14
 century of the English ‘urban renaissance’ and the growth of the ‘leisure town’, both

issues of recent debate among historians. […] In England, the advance first of

regional printing and newspaper publishing and then (much later) of regional book

publishing, is one of the most striking features of the eighteenth-century book trade.

In printing, although not in publishing, the 1690s had been the watershed decade.

From mid-century, bookselling and newspaper publishing in the country towns

increased sharply.34

The urban renaissance was the context within which many leading figures of science, art and

industry operated, notably John Baskerville, surely the most famous printer of the Midlands,

who features in several of these articles. As Caroline Archer-Parré explains in her article,

Baskerville was ‘an Enlightenment figure who changed the course of type design’.35 The

article by Caroline Archer-Parré and Ann-Marie Carey describes a groundbreaking scientific

analysis of the punches used by Baskerville, shedding much new light on the practices of this

outstanding printer of the eighteenth century.

The unique conditions that shaped the history of printing in England led to a

concentration of scholarly studies on London printing, plus a selection of local studies on

various provincial towns carried out, for the most part, by ‘amateur’ historians, though none

the worse for that. Unfortunately, the emphasis on London, important though it is, has tended

to skew the history of British printing to some extent. This issue of Midland History helps to

redress the balance by exploring aspects of provincial printing in central England. I

suggested, some years ago, that the time was surely ripe for the development of a history of

34
J. Raven, The Business of Books: booksellers and the English book trade 1450-1850 (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2007), p.141. See also J. Feather, A History of British Publishing
(2nd edn, London: Routledge, 2006).
35
See Archer-Parré’s article in this issue.

15
printing in the English regions and for the connections between London and the regions to be

studied more systematically:

One aspect of the history of provincial printing that may be seen as a new opportunity

is the systematic study of regional trade networks at various periods. There has not yet

been a great deal of research at regional level, but I would suggest that, after many

years of piecemeal local research, we are close to the point where sufficient

information has been gathered to enable at least a tentative regional history of printing

to be attempted in some parts of the country. At least as important as researching

regional printing networks is the identification of book-trade links between the

provinces and London.36

Provincial printing and bookselling are given some attention in the volumes of The

Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (CHoBB) published in seven volumes by

Cambridge University Press between 1999 and 2019.37

In recent years, printing history has undergone a ‘spatial turn’, as have social and

cultural history more broadly. This has invigorated the field considerably, by focusing

attention on the importance of space and place.38 This is a key topic discussed in Caroline

Archer-Parré’s article. An important aspect of the spatial turn is an increasing interest in how

printers (and other book-trade people) chose where to trade: not only which town but which

36
J. Hinks, ‘Local and Regional Studies of Printing History: Context and Content’, Journal of the
Printing Historical Society (NS 5, Spring 2003), 3-15 (5-6). See also Historical Networks in the Book
Trade, ed. by J. Hinks and C. Feely (London: Routledge, 2017).
37
See for example: J. Barnard and M. Bell, ‘The English Provinces’, in CHoBB, vol. IV: 1557-1695
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 665-686, and M. Bell and J. Hinks, ‘The English
Provincial Book Trade: evidence from the British Book Trade Index’ in CHoBB, vol. V: 1695-1830
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 335-51.
38
See for example: Geographies of the Book, edited by M. Ogborn and C. W. J. Withers (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2010).

16
location within that town to establish their business.39 The aforementioned Ann Ireland

obviously chose her location very carefully: her shop and circulating library were situated

opposite the Assembly Rooms in Leicester, where the gentry of the town and county

congregated, providing Ireland with a regular supply of customers with wide-ranging and

fashionable demands.40

One Midlands town in particular, Oxford, has long played a major international role

in scholarly printing and publishing, through the wide-ranging work of its university press

(OUP). Sahar Afshar explains in her article how OUP pioneered printing in Gurmukhi script.

This followed OUP’s long established practice of designing, casting and setting so-called

‘exotic’ founts, initially as a scholarly activity but, by the nineteenth century, engaging with

British India by publishing books in the various languages of the subcontinent. This reflects

yet another controversy: printing history has until recently been seen almost exclusively

through the lens of the roman alphabet to the exclusion of what are now known as ‘global

scripts’ and which collectively are used by more people worldwide than the roman alphabet.

The spatial turn also liberated the geographical scope of the field by recognising that

national boundaries are not always the most appropriate for historical surveys, even for a

period (roughly before the mid nineteenth-century) when the nation-state was still emerging

as a new phenomenon: ‘[the] transnational perspective, loosely defined as studying cultural

flows across political boundaries, is both a legitimate and helpful approach for this period’.41

39
For London, see J. Raven, Bookscape: geographies of printing and publishing in London before
1800 (London: British Library, 2014); for Birmingham, see M. Dick, ‘The Topographies of a
Typographer: mapping John Baskerville since the eighteenth century’, in John Baskerville: art and
industry of the Enlightenment, ed. by C. Archer-Parré and M. Dick (Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2017), pp. 9-24.
40
Advertisement in the Leicester Journal, 14 October 1786. Following the death of her husband, she
had to vacate his shop and relocate.
41
Leisure Cultures in Urban Europe, c.1700-1870: a transnational perspective, ed. by P. Borsay and
J. H. Furnée (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), p. 7. See also The Spatial Turn:
interdisciplinary perspectives, ed. by B. Warf and S. Arias (London: Routledge, 2008).

17
The articles in this issue range widely in both topic and chronological focus but they benefit

from a unifying, if many-faceted, approach to the history of printing and print culture in

many of its diverse manifestations.

Print has played a key role in many historical movements, not least in the ‘Midlands

Enlightenment’, an increasingly popular area of study.42 As Caroline Archer-Parré explains,

print had a part to play in this ‘cultural manifestation that created the space in which science,

art and industry could exchange ideas, where social, cultural and industrial interactions could

be forged which in turn facilitated rapid industrial and economic growth’.43 That sentence

sums up the essence of the history of printing and print culture: a pivotal role where

technology, art, science and creativity respond to, and in turn contribute to, so many aspects

of life. This issue of Midland History aims to explain, by means of carefully chosen case-

studies, how this fascinating process has manifested itself through the centuries since the

invention of printing, right down to the present day.

42
See for example P. M. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment: science, technology and culture in
Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760-1820 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008);
British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (30:2, 2007), special issue, ‘Science and the Midlands
Enlightenment’.
43
See Archer-Parré’s article in this issue.

18