Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-century British Publishing and Reading Practices.

"We read nowadays in the market-place," wrote Frederic Harrison in 1879, " - I would rather say in some large steam factory of letter-press, where damp sheets of new press whirl round us perpetually - if it be not some noisy book-fair where literary showmen tempt us with performing dolls, and the gongs of rival booths are stunning our ears from morn till night" (quoted 169-70). These words encapsulate many of the responses to the publishing explosion of the Victorian period. They demonstrate an awareness of the commercial aspects of book production, a fear of being engulfed by the onslaught of print, a concern about the quality of these proliferating books and periodicals, and a faint suspicion of vulgarity tainting this celebration of abundance.

A different sort of explosion has been witnessed more recently, that of the History of the Book. This new discipline - it deserves the name - involves an examination of the interactive, interdependent processes of publishing and …