A Companion to the History of the Book (45 page)

By 1800, Britain had a print-dependent economy and culture, an increasingly literate and rapidly growing population, and an efficient book trade in which specialization in the various activities that constitute the trade was creating new businesses and laying the foundations for success and prosperity. The market and the means of reaching it developed in parallel, each feeding off the other. New genres and formats were developed to meet market demand. New methods of trading were devised. New distribution systems evolved. In the England of Elizabeth, books were still a luxury; in George III’s United Kingdom, they had become a part of the fabric of life.

References and Further Reading

Altick, R. D. (1957)
The English Common Reader: A Short History of the Mass Reading Public 1800– 1900.
Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Berg, M. (2004) “Consumption in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century Britain.” In R. Floud and P. Johnson (eds.),
The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain,
vol. I:
Industrialisation 1700–1860.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cranfield, G. A. (1962) The
Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700–1760.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Darnton, R. (1982) “What is the History of Books?”
Daedalus,
111: 107–35.

— (1990)
The Kiss ofLamourette: Reflections in Cultural History.
London: Faber and Faber.

Feather, J. (1985)
The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-century England.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— (1994)
Publishing, Piracy and Politics: An Historical Study of Copyright in Britain.
London: Mansell.

— (2006)
A History of British Publishing,
rev. edn. London: Routledge.

Ferdinand, C. Y. (1997)
Benjamin Collins and the Provincial Newspaper Trade in the Eighteenth Century.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Johns, A. (1998)
The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mitchell, B. R. (1988)
British Historical Statistics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pollard, G. (1955)
The Earliest Directory of the Book Trade.
London: Bibliographical Society.

— (1978) “The English Market for Printed Books.”
Publishing History,
4: 7–48.

Roberts, J. (2002) “The Latin Trade.” In J. Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, with M. Bell (eds.),
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain,
vol. IV:
1557–1695,
pp. 141–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

St. Clair, W. (2004)
The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Woudhuysen, H. R. (1996)
Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

18

Print and Public in Europe 1600–1800

Rietje van Vliet

Imagine a man who must manage the daily business of three bookshops [in Berlin, Stettin, and Danzig] with all of the accompanying annoyances and worries, who is forced to spend eight weeks visiting two Leipzig fairs and occasionally the Danzig fair as well, who writes and signs some 400 letters a year concerning the [learned journal] Deutsche Bibliothek, not counting other correspondence, [and] who is not safe from interruption at any hour of the day, because anyone may enter a public shop.

These weary words were written by Friedrich Nicolai, one of the greatest publisher–booksellers of eighteenth-century Germany (Selwyn 2000: 99). His shop could be found in the center of Berlin, and was recognizable by the bust of Homer above the doorway. That in itself was an indication that business was blossoming; for most booksellers had to make do with striking lettering on the façade, or a shop sign. Title pages of recently published books, in addition to prospectuses, pamphlets, broadsheets, subscription lists, and other eye-catchers hung on the doorposts, the window frames, and on the wooden notice boards on the front of the bookshop – an effective way of advertising that had existed before the invention of the printing press. Inside, the bookcases reached to the ceiling. Most of the bookshelves contained stacks of paper, the unbound books. In the seventeenth century, these were in folio or quarto format; in the eighteenth century, chiefly octavos or small handy-sized duodecimos. Often there was room in the shop itself for folding and binding the quires. Only a limited number of books were already fitted with a parchment or leather binding. Not only books were sold: office supplies, lottery tickets, and even drugs were available over the counter. Outside, servants were busy unloading the sturdily packaged, waterproof barrels and crates full of printed sheets, quires that had been ordered by colleagues at home and abroad (Lehmstedt 1999).

The appearance of the bookshop and the activity surrounding it changed little in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Illustrations, regardless of where and when they were made, show little variation. But the growth in this sector of industry itself showed huge differences. In terms of speed, the book trade in Europe developed unequally. Important factors were the extent of urbanization, the Church’s influence, and the sovereign’s ambitions. Venice, which until 1700 was responsible for a quarter of the total production in Italy – for the most part consisting of religious and school books destined for the Iberian peninsula – was now faced with formidable competition from Rome, with its large community of scholars (Santoro 2003: 115–24). The book trade in rural Czechia (Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovakia, which as parts of the Habsburg empire were subject to Austria’s severe censorship legislation and language politics, scarcely got off the ground (Šiměck 2002: 29, 87). In the Southern Netherlands (Belgium), where in the sixteenth century Antwerp booksellers such as Plantin belonged to Europe’s best, the book trade did not amount to much in the centuries thereafter. The dependence upon Spain and later upon Austria hampered further development. In Austria itself, the book trade only really blossomed under enlightened monarchs such as Maria Theresa and Joseph II (Bachleitner et al. 2000).

In seventeenth-century Spain the
Imprenta real
in Madrid was the most active publisher. Cities like Barcelona and Valencia also functioned as centers of the book trade. The monarchs of the Bourbon dynasty, who had been on the Spanish throne since 1700, were favorably disposed toward the arts and sciences and, therefore, toward the book trade. However, protectionist measures, in combination with the ever-watchful eye of the Catholic censors, prevented a lively trade with the rest of Europe (Fouché et al. 2005: 111–13). Finally, in Moscovia, only
the Moskovskii pechatnyi dvor
was allowed to print books throughout the seventeenth century. It was controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church. After 1721, when Peter the Great had himself declared emperor of Russia, the center of the book trade moved to St. Petersburg, where the Imprimerie de l’Académie des Sciences’
Knižnaja palata
obtained a monopoly position in the distribution of enlightened ideas. Catherine the Great also allowed private individuals to enter into the publishing trade, but when the French Revolution broke out, she decided at once to close Novikov’s printing office, which had been responsible for one-third of Russian book production (Barenbaum 1991: 41–57). The largest players in international book trade were the Dutch Republic and, in the second half of the eighteenth century, France and the German states.

International Book Trade

During the seventeenth century, the international book trade was dominated by the Netherlands, and this did not change until the middle of the eighteenth century. Two events contributed to the Dutch booksellers’ success. First, Antwerp fell into Spanish hands at the height of the Dutch Revolt in 1585. This gave Amsterdam the opportunity to assume an economically leading position as the center of international trade. Amongst the Protestant refugees who moved from Antwerp to the north were many printers and publisher–booksellers. For example, the famous Dutch publishing family Elzevier, which was responsible for approximately 16,000 editions between 1580 and 1712, came from the Southern Netherlands (Dongelmans et al. 2000). The Republic’s political structure, its enormous economic growth, excellent commercial relations, comparatively broad religious tolerance, and the presence of trade and investment capital gave the Dutch book trade the opportunity to develop into the
“magasin de l’univers”
Finally, the persecution of the Jews in Spain and Portugal, which resulted in an exodus of well-to-do Sephardic Jews to Amsterdam, had a similar impact on the Hebrew book trade. To the farthest corners of Eastern Europe, this market was dominated by Jewish Amsterdam booksellers (Berkvens-Stevelinck et al. 1992).

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, resulting in a large influx of refugees, also added to the flourishing Dutch book trade and gave an additional boost to its quality. Many Huguenots brought little else with them other than their considerable intellectual abilities. A number of them established themselves as booksellers and created a ferment in international trade, in part thanks to the complex international network of scholars and fellow-booksellers of Huguenot descent. Of these, the most important were the brothers Huguetan and Henry Desbordes of Amsterdam, Abraham Acher of Rotterdam, Jean Neaulme of The Hague, and Elie Luzac of Leiden.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the Republic’s dominant position as a producer of books came to an end. In 1750, Malesherbes became director of Louis XV’s office of pre-publication book censorship. He was to be a great defender of the economic interests of the French publishing industry, and opposed the rival censorship prerogative claims of France’s parliaments and episcopacy. As a result, the French book trade was able to develop, and the Dutch had to contend with competition from the south. This also applied to the large book-trade firms just outside the borders of France, such as the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel in Switzerland and the Bassompierre Company in the Principality of Liège.

A second factor that brought the supremacy of the Dutch book trade to an end was strong economic growth in the German states. These had finally recovered from the consequences of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). It was not until 1765 that book production returned to the level it had been in 1620 (Blanning 2002: 142). For all those years, Dutch booksellers had been active and had opened branch offices in German cities. For example, Amsterdam citizens Arkstee and Merkus owned one of the largest bookshops in Leipzig; Janssonius van Waesberge had a branch in Danzig, Neaulme in Berlin, and Luzac in Göttingen (van Vliet 2005: 189–90). The quality of their printing was better, the Dutch paper was superior, and their trade network was much more closely knit than that of their German counterparts.

Under the influence of Frederick the Great, king in Prussia from 1740, Berlin grew to become the center of the scholarly world. The presence of many internationally famous scholars, among whom were many Huguenots, ensured a thriving book trade there. The international book fairs, traditionally the logistic junctions of the printed word, also strengthened the German book trade. Initially, the center was in Frankfurt, where in 1650 twice as many books were sold than in Leipzig. However, the strict censorship legislation in this Catholic trade center on the Main, a tributary of the Rhine, prevented a free trade in enlightened ideas. By 1700, the situation had completely reversed and Leipzig had taken over Frankfurt’s role as the city for international book fairs. The enlightened climate in the Protestant electorate of Saxony, to which Leipzig belonged, gave writers and booksellers far more opportunities. Frankfurt’s last book fair catalogue appeared in 1750 with only seventy-two titles, whereas the annual production in the German states at that time already amounted to 1,350 titles (Steinberg 1996: 131–2). After that, the number of titles offered by national and international booksellers via the Leipzig book fair catalogues grew explosively. In 1755, there were just 1,231 titles; in 1775; there were 2,025 titles; and by 1795 the number had risen to 3,368 titles. But by then, Leipzig’s importance as Europe’s intellectual center was already on the wane. Due to the rise of commission selling, in which publishers sent retailers requested and unrequested books on commission, and due to the distribution of books via main correspondents, it was no longer necessary for a bookseller to do his purchasing twice a year at the
Buchmesse.
In 1784, the last Dutchman with his own book stand was spotted at the book fair (van Vliet 2005: 190–7).

Although at the beginning of the eighteenth century the first German quality printers had already begun to resist the presence of the Dutch in their home market, it was thanks to the Leipzig bookseller Philip Erasmus Reich, in particular, that the booksellers from Germany’s many principalities collectively took action to recapture their position from the Dutch. He obtained support from, amongst others, Georg Conrad Walther of Dresden who maintained close relations with many French philosophers, and from the Breitkopf Company in Leipzig which, in the second half of the eighteenth century, would develop into one of the most famous music printing firms in Europe.

There was also a push factor that made the Dutch publisher–printers give up their dominant position in the international book trade. It was a step in a development that led to further specialization in the book business. As long as the custom of exchange trade existed and payments were made in printed sheets of the same value, booksellers were generally both printers and publishers. In the international book trade, particularly, exchange remained common for a long time. It is evident, however, that by the middle of the seventeenth century, most of the publisher–booksellers generally contracted their printing out to specialized printers. Only 13.7 percent of all books published in Berlin between the years 1751 and 1825 were manufactured by publisher–booksellers in their own printing shops (Selwyn 2000: 103). After the 1750s, further specialization took place: buying on an annual account made the combination of publishing and distribution less necessary. The new means of distribution, after all, offered discounts of up to 30 percent. It became attractive to focus on wholesale and retail trade and leave the production of books to countries with low salaries and cheap paper and ink (Selwyn 2000: 113–15; van Delft and de Wolf 2003).

The Expansion of the Public Sphere

One of the most conceptual studies of culture in the eighteenth century is Jürgen Habermas’s
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
(first published in 1962 ; first English edition 1989). He defined the public sphere as the medium by means of which private persons can debate in public. In doing so, they make use of a rich array of cultural media: reading societies, literary societies, learned societies, libraries, theaters, museums, coffee houses, salons, and so on. Free debate could occur orally, of course, but also in books, newspapers, and other periodicals. The production of these printed forms increased spectacularly throughout Europe in order to satisfy the emancipating citizen’s ever-increasing hunger for reading. In the years 1701–10, sixty-four new periodicals appeared in the German states alone; from 1741 to 1750, there were 260 new titles in that area; from 1781 to 1790 no less than 1,225 new periodicals were added. In total, between 1700 and 1790, German readers saw the appearance of 3,494 new periodicals (Blanning 2002: 5–14, 159).

To a large degree, the expansion of the public sphere was caused by rapidly increasing levels of literacy. These varied from country to country and were often related to the area’s level of urbanization. At the same time, there were significant differences in literacy between men and women, and between countries, depending on whether these were Catholic or Protestant. Percentages are difficult to establish with accuracy because research is mainly based upon available signatures or crosses on official acts. Moreover, this information reveals little about the reading abilities of those concerned.

In 1680, 29 percent of the French male population could read and write. A hundred years later, in 1780, this percentage was 47 percent. For women, the percentage rose from 14 to 27 percent. By contrast, in Paris in 1789, 90 percent of men were able to put their signature to a will with 80 percent of women being able to do so. In Amsterdam in 1730, 76 percent of men and 51 percent of women signed their marriage certificate; in 1780, the percentages were 85 percent and 64 percent, respectively (Houston 1988: 130–54; Blanning 2002: 111–18). Estimates indicate that in the middle of the eighteenth century only 10 percent of the adult population of German-speaking Central Europe could read and write. In 1770 this had gone up to 15 percent and in 1800 to 25 percent. In countries like Poland and Russia where levels of urbanization were low, illiteracy was high (Schenda 1977: 441–5).