During the eighteenth century there was a growing interest in recording, listing and documenting the world, whether for personal interest and private consumption, or general record and the greater good. Such documentation was done through both the written and printed word. Each genre had its own material conventions and spawned industries which supported these practices. This volume considers writing and printing in parallel: it highlights the intersections between the two methods of communication; discusses the medium and materiality of the message; considers how writing and printing were deployed in the construction of personal and cultural identities; and explores the different dimensions surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of private and public letters, words and texts during the eighteenth-century. In combination the chapters in this volume consider how the processes of both writing and printing contributed to the creation of cultural identity and taste, assisted in the spread of knowledge and furthered personal, political, economic, social and cultural change in Britain and the wider-world. This volume provides an original narrative on the nature of communication and brings a fresh perspective on printing history, print culture and the literate society of the Enlightenment.

The History of Britain and Ireland: Prehistory to Today is a balanced and integrated political, social, cultural, and religious history of the British Isles. Kenneth Campbell explores the constantly evolving dialogue and relationship between the past and the present. Written in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall demonstrations, The History of Britain and Ireland examines the history of Britain and Ireland at a time when it asks difficult questions of its past and looks to the future. Campbell places Black history at the forefront of his analysis and offers a voice to marginalised communities, to craft a complete and comprehensive history of Britain and Ireland from Prehistory to Today. This book is unique in that it integrates the histories of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to provide a balanced view of British history. Building on the successful foundations laid by the first edition, the book has been updated to include: · COVID-19 and earlier diseases in history · LGBT History · A fresh appraisal of Winston Churchill · Brexit and the subsequent negotiations · 45 illustrations Richly illustrated and focusing on the major turning points in British history, this book helps students engage with British history and think critically about the topic.

This book presents an overview of the convergence of traditional letterpress with contemporary digital design and fabrication practices. Reflecting on the role of letterpress within the emergent hybrid post-digital design process, contributors present historical and contemporary analysis, grounded in case studies and current practice. The main themes covered include the research on letterpress as a technology and medium; a reflection on the contribution of letterpress to arts and design education; and current artistic and communication design practice merging past, present and future digital fabrication processes. This will be of interest to scholars working in graphic design, communication design, book design, typography, typeface design, design history, printing, and production technologies.

This peer-reviewed conference volume examines paper and material aspects of the written word in early modern Europe. The collection is designed around three thematic strands, based on the lifecycle of handwritten documents and manuscripts and printed books: first, production of paper, second production of books and manuscripts and third, trade and exchange, and ownership of manuscripts and books. By tracing the history of paper, books and collections through case studies of historically important objects, the authors identify agents and hotspots of production, trade and ownership from both centres and peripheries of Europe from the late Middle Ages until the beginning of industrialisation. They thereby address material aspects of documents, manuscripts and books, as well as object biography, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. By doing so this volume provides insight into actual practices of the past and the material history of written texts.

This volume is the third ina in a six volume collection that brings together primary sources on gardens and gardening across the long nineteenth-century. Economic expansion, empire, the growth of the middle classes and suburbia, the changing role of women and the professionalisation of gardening, alongside industrialisation and the development of leisure and mass markets were all elements that contributed to and were influenced by the evolution of gardens. It is a subject that is both global and multidisciplinary and this set provides the reader with a variety of ways in which to read gardens – through recognition of how they were conceived and experienced as they developed. Material is primarily derived from Britain, with Europe, USA, Australia, India, China and Japan also featuring, and sources include the gardening press, the broader press, government papers, book excerpts and some previously unpublished material.

Lucas Haasis found a time capsule: A complete mercantile letter archive of the merchant Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens who lived in 18th century Hamburg. Luetkens travelled France between 1743-1745 in order to become a successful wholesale merchant. He succeeded in this undertaking via both shrewd business practice and proficient skills in the practice of letter writing. Based on this unique discovery, in this microhistorical study Lucas Haasis examines the crucial steps and activities of a mercantile establishment phase, the typical letter practices of Early Modern merchants, and the practical principles of persuasion leading to success in the 18th century.

Variously identified as an art, a technology, and a professional prerequisite, forms of shorthand have been in use from Antiquity to the modern day. Far from a niche corner in manuscript studies, shorthand represents an almost global phenomenon that has touched upon many aspects of everyday life and of scholarship. Due to its immediate illegibility, however, and the daunting task of decipherment, shorthand has long been neglected as a research object in its own right. The immense quantity of extant and unread shorthand manuscripts has been downplayed, as has the technology's place in cultures of learning, religious devotion, court practice, parliamentary procedure, authorial composition, corporate life, public and private writing, and the academy. As the first ever peer-reviewed volume on the subject, this book presents a much-needed introduction to shorthand, its history, and its disparate historiography, alongside eight contributions by shorthand specialists that showcase some of the many lines of inquiry that shorthand inspires across a range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. For readers with a vested interest in shorthand, this volume provides a range of approaches to shorthand in the Latin West, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, upon which to orient, substantiate, and inform their own work. For general readers, this publication invites scholars to consider ways in which historically overlooked or underestimated forms of writing facilitated a variety of writing cultures in different contexts, periods, and languages.

Eighteenth-century fiction holds an unusual place in the history of modern print culture. The novel gained prominence largely because of advances in publishing, but, as a popular genre, it also helped shape those very developments. Authors in the period manipulated the appearance of the page and print technology more deliberately than has been supposed, prompting new forms of reception among readers. Christopher Flint's book explores works by both obscure 'scribblers' and canonical figures, such as Swift, Haywood, Defoe, Richardson, Sterne and Austen, that interrogated the complex interactions between the book's material aspects and its producers and consumers. Flint links historical shifts in how authors addressed their profession to how books were manufactured and how readers consumed texts. He argues that writers exploited typographic media to augment other crucial developments in prose fiction, from formal realism and free indirect discourse to accounts of how 'the novel' defined itself as a genre.

Though the Virginia colony was founded in 1607, printing was not conducted until 1699 when William Parks was designated public printer. Of special interest is a section on "a free press," and another on the establishment in 1736 of the Virginia Gazette, the first in the colony.

Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England assesses the contribution of the business press and the publication of print to the economic transformation of England. The impact of non-book printing has been long neglected. A raft of jobbing work serviced commerce and finance while many more practical guides and more ephemeral pamphlets on trade and investment were read than the books that we now associate with the foundations of modern political economy. A pivotal change in the book trades, apparent from the late seventeenth century, was the increased separation of printers from bookseller-publishers, from the skilled artisan to the bookseller-financier who might have no prior training in the printing house but who took up the sale of publications as another commodity. This book examines the broader social relationship between publication and the practical conduct of trade; the book asks what it meant to be 'published' and how print, text and image related to the involvement of script. The age of Enlightenment was an age of astonishing commercial and financial transformation offering printers and the business press new market opportunities. Print helped to effect a business revolution. The reliability, reputation, regularity, authority and familiarity of print increased trust and confidence and changed attitudes and behaviours. New modes of publication and the wide-ranging products of printing houses had huge implications for the way lives were managed, regulated and recorded. JAMES RAVEN is Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge.