A History of the Book in America: Volume 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World

Volume 1 of A History of the Book in America, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, encompasses the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is organized around three major themes: the persisting colonial relationship between European settlements and the Old World; the gradual emergence of a pluralistic book trade that differentiated printers from booksellers; and the transition from a ‘culture of the Word’, organized around an understanding of print as a vehicle of the sacred, to the culture of republicanism, epitomized by Benjamin Franklin, and culminating in the uses of print during the Revolutionary era. The volume will also describe nascent forms of literary and learned culture (including the circulation of manuscripts), literacy and censorship, orality, and the efforts by Europeans to introduce written literary to Native Americans and African Americans.

• Fullest, most accurate statistics on book production and distribution • Deals with both popular and learned culture • Relocates the story from the history of printing to the history of bookselling

Introduction: some contexts and questions: the Europeans’ encounter with the Native Americans David D. Hall; 1. Re-inventing the Colonial book Hugh Amory; 2. The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century David D. Hall; 3. Printing and bookselling in New England 1638–1713 Hugh Amory; 4. Readers and writers in seventeenth-century New England David D. Hall; 5. The Atlantic world, Part I. The Atlantic Economy in the Eighteenth Century David D. Hall: Part II. Printers’ Supplies and Capitalization John Bidwell: Part III. The Importation of Books in the Eighteenth Century James Raven: Part IV. Note Imports and Domestic Production: Hugh Amory; 6. The book trade in the Middle Colonies, 1680–1720 James N. Green; 7. The Southern book trade in the eighteenth century Calhoun Winton; 8. The book trade in the Middle Colonies in the age of Franklin James N. Green; Part II. The German and Dutch Language Books and Printing: A. Gregg Roeber; 9. The New England Book Trade. 1713–1790 Hugh Amory; 10. Periodicals and politics, Part I. Early American Journalism: news and opinion in the Popular Press Charles E. Clark; Part II. Shifting Freedoms of the Press in the Eighteenth Century Richard D. Brown; 11. Practices of reading: introduction David D. Hall; 1. Literacy and schoolbooks Ross W. Beales and E. Jennifer Monaghan; 2. Customers and the marketplace for books Elizabeth Carroll Reilly and David D. Hall; 12. Learned culture in the eighteenth century David D. Hall; 13. Literary culture in the eighteenth century David Shields.

‘… the very high standards achieved in the research, the writing and the editing of this volume have been matched by its designers and printers, resulting in a work that is truly a delight to read.’ Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand