Images & texts

With this first volume of an annual series the study of the history of the ramification of the book trade outside the metropolis, with its overseas connexions, can be said to have come of age as a subject worthy of serious scholarly study. Print production and distribution, the 'Print Network' of the series title, looks into the social and economic aspects of print, into its fundamental context - the 'archaeological artefacts' of a literate society. The series of papers in this volume, dealing mainly with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, over newspapers, chapbooks, popular images, small-town booksellers and printers, industrial relations, non-English publishing and readership. These are topics which reflect the current preoccupations of book-trade studies, while suggesting new themes and approaches for further research.