As Pierre Bourdieu points out, economic success and artistic status rarely overlap in cultural industries. This volume focuses on the period in which commercial book publishing became a mass market business that was able to appeal to a wide range of interests and incomes.
'An important and significant work that makes a genuine contribution to the history of the book and book publishing during nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain.' William Baker, Professor of English, Northern Illinois University '... [for] those who wish to understand how literature is actually written, published, read and only then valued, this deeply researched and well written book will prove essential reading.' Contemporary Review 'Weedon has finally published the results of many years' research into the business of book production... The results are a bonanza for those needing well-defined and researched details of trends in British book production for the eighty years covered in this survey... The details are impressive, the scholarship obvious... offers a great deal of important information on the growth, development and maturing of the British book trade in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.' Library History 'The appendices of the book are as valuable as the chapters.' Sharp 'Weedon offers a great deal of important statistical information in this book... Historians of publishing are now able to ask questions that we could not previously hope to answer.' Economic History Review '... one of the most extensive analyses of the Victorian British book publishing industry to date... illuminates broad trends in the growth and diversity of book publishing in Britain and its colonies... includes some important new research and a definite refinement in the economic analysis of the available evidence on Victorian book publishing... packed with tables and figures, most of which are so clearly laid out and well footnoted that the most statistics-averse readers can make sense of them... essential foundational reading in Victorian publishing history.' Victorian Periodicals Review 'This is an important book for anyone interested in the process of book production and the transmission of ideas during the long nineteenth century... This book is a notable addition to Ashgate's 'Nineteenth Century' series. It provides an excellent introduction to set of sources that has been surprisingly neglected by book historians and others interested in the material text.' Journal of the Printing Historical Society
