In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Producing the Eighteenth-Century Book: Writers and Publishers in England, 1650–1800
  • Janine Barchas
Producing the Eighteenth-Century Book: Writers and Publishers in England, 1650–1800, ed. Laura L. Runge and Pat Rogers. Newark: Delaware, 2009. Pp. 298. $65.

This collection may index the state of book history. The essays, which mix bibliography and literary readings in the manner of textual studies, grew out of the 20th DeBartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of South Florida. An elegant and concise two-page Foreword by J. Paul Hunter is followed by an Introduction from Laura L. Runge and twelve essays. The topics are so diverse (covering both minor and major authors, genres from novels to stud books, and the indexing strategies of lawyers and housewives alike) that they resist categorization.

On the one hand, Paul Hunter observes how the variety of approaches and topics in this collection demonstrate the open-endedness and inclusivity of book history, a field that he hails as a “venerable” branch of academic endeavor: “There is no single agenda here, no attempt to dictate where further study should go, and no coercive attempt to create a rigid new partnership.” On the other, he warns how such virtues may, over time, prove a vice: “so far the history of the book has failed to provide a sustained direction for literary studies . . . at a moment when the study of literature has seemed ripe (desperate, even) for a conceptual direction that would re-engage other humanists with literature.” Perhaps not quite “once more unto the breach,” but nonetheless a call for unity and action. While this collection delivers—in spades—on quality and range, the manifold applications of a book-history approach remain both flaw and feature.

Ironically, what still unites book historians is an Eisenstein inheritance that compels us to emphasize moments of radical change, disjunction, and innovation—perhaps at the risk of rejecting common ground with both the past and with each other. Straight out of the gate, Ms. Runge’s introduction emphasizes how “strange” eighteenth-century publishing practices might appear to a “contemporary bibliophile,” [End Page 100] justifying the collection by warning us of our historical alienation. Yet, the problems tackled in the volume prove decidedly familiar: scholars ask questions about eighteenth-century publishing “networks,” about search strategies in an age of exponential information growth, even about the possible modernity of Edmund Curll’s manipulation of celebrity culture. Betty A. Schellenberg points to the decades between 1740 and 1770, traditionally considered “a time of consolidation,” as a period of extraordinary innovation in book production—all the more radical, she suggests, for occurring during a time of technological continuity. She explains how “significant shifts in the print ‘revolution’ might still be occurring centuries after the definitive arrival of print.” Thus, she nudges risktakers such as Johnson, Richardson, Dodsley, and John Newbery into the spotlight of innovation still aimed at Gutenberg and Caxton.

Several essays do urge tighter disciplinary connections—especially between manuscript and print cultures. A characteristically insightful essay by Margaret J. M. Ezell stakes a claim in book history for volumes that start out as empty books of blank leaves and, over time, are filled in to chronicle domestic life. What is refreshing about her essay, which focuses on a single-author volume from 1656, is the ordinariness of its subject: “Anne Glyde . . . was absolutely no one, just a woman sitting at home, going about her domestic life.” Similarly, Phyllis Thompson’s essay seizes upon a handful of old manuscript recipe volumes in order to “shift the focus” of book history to “nonliterary manuscripts [that] have been routinely overlooked.” And indeed no modern reader with Joycean sympathies for the ordinary can fail to delight in the minutiae of eighteenth-century middle-class life, so vividly preserved in handwritten recipe books that double as a household’s medical reference guides.

The volume is chock-full of local insights as it demonstrates the versatility of the book-history toolkit. For example, Richard Nash deftly maneuvers from manuscript to print and back while claiming that modern conversations about bioengineering are indebted to eighteenth-century stud books, in which the “thoroughbred” was simultaneously invented and...

pdf

Share