The Press and the People | Detalhe de capa

Early modern Scotland was awash with cheap print. Adam Fox, in the first dedicated study of the phenomenon in Scotland, gives readers some startling figures. Andro Hart, one of Edinburgh’s leading booksellers, died in 1622. In his possession, according to his inventory, were 42,300 unbound copies of English books printed on his own presses. John Wreittoun, also Edinburgh based, had in stock at his death in 1640 what Fox estimates to be 7,680 ‘waist littell scheittis of paper’, printed up as ‘littell pamphlettis and balladis’, and averaging a sale price of just 3d Scots (pp. 70-2). The inventory of Robert Drummond, drawn up, again in Edinburgh, in 1752, recorded a quantity of printed ‘small phamphlets’ and ‘ballads’ that Fox estimates amounted to 174,000 separate copies ready to go to market (p. 107). While historians of early modern print are well aware that the number of works we know about was once far surpassed by those now no longer extant, Fox’s examination of the inventories of Scotland’s printers and booksellers confirms the scale of the loss. It shows that Scottish printers were not predominantly producers of books and exposes a ‘vastly’ larger market for cheap print ‘than has ever been realised’ (p. 11). Leia Mais