A Biographical Dictionary of those Engaged in the Book Trade in Kent 1750–1900 by R. J. Goulden (review)

E. gordon duff, in his 1911 sandars lectures, spoke of ‘the cloud of obscurity’ hanging over the history of the provincial book trade in England, and this would largely remain so for the next sixty years. It was only during the 1970s that systematic efforts began to be made to record members of the trade in various important provincial centres, and it was the mid-1980s before the first attempts were made at analysing the impact of the provincial trade as a whole. The coming of the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) at this time provided a boost to such efforts as both provincial imprints and metropolitan imprints listing provincial distributors began to be recorded in significant numbers. The work under review originated with the compiler’s appointment as a member of the ESTC team in 1977. Over the ensuing thirty-five years he assembled an impressive database with details of more than 4500 employers and employees engaged in the book and related trades during the century and a half in question. The entries range in size from a brief two-line reference to about 750 words.

Some work has already been undertaken on aspects of the book trade in Kent during the eighteenth century by David Knott, David Shaw, and others. These have been acknowledged in the Preface but might usefully have been described in more detail in the Introduction. No reason is given as to why 1750 was adopted as a starting point for the dictionary although there is flexibility at each end of the period to cover those individuals whose careers overlapped the cut-off dates. Thus the full career of James Abree, who successfully re-established printing in Canterbury after 1718 is included, but not that of Thomas Reeve, who briefly reintroduced the trade to the city the previous year, nor indeed of John Mychell, who briefly printed in the city during the mid-sixteenth century. Given the paucity of information on individuals prior to 1750 that is available, and the relative ease of identifying names from ESTC and other sources, it is difficult to see why these early names were not also included.

The two most striking features of the work are the number of individuals identified and the volume of detailed information recorded about some fairly minor trades men. A wide range of book and other print-related trades are covered, including different kinds of printers and their workers, booksellers and stationers (both travelling and fixed), music sellers, library proprietors, newspaper proprietors, editors, and reporters. Only newsagents have been excluded ‘except for those who went beyond the confines of selling newspapers’ (p. xi). The scale of the work is reflected by the numbers of sources consulted. Seventy-five churches and chapels are cited in the list of abbreviations and approaching 120 local newspapers, journals and periodicals. Further lists of abbreviations indicate the use of nearly 150 secondary sources or categories of records and twenty-two societies or record repositories. Other sources used, which have only been cited on one occasion, are not included in these lists. Thus there is no doubt that the compiler has undertaken a thorough job. Twenty-four book trade occupations are given in the list of abbreviations ranging from account-book maker to stationer. Other less common book or print-related trades and the subsidiary trades that might be undertaken alongside are spelled out in full in the entries. For the second half of the nineteenth century the compiler had access to the detailed census returns for the county which indicate the trades of many of their employees. Thus many compositors, engravers, and stationers’ assistants, are also identified.

Kent is slightly problematic as a county for although there are clear geographic boundaries to the north, east, south and south west of the county, those areas in the north-west adjoining Surrey and London were rapidly...