Pen, print and communication in the eighteenth century
- Submitting institution
-
Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_B2001
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Liverpool University Press
- ISBN
- 9781789622300
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The researcher conceived, crafted, co-edited and contributed a chapter and introduction to <Pen, print and communication in the eighteenth century> a volume of twelve essays exploring the production, distribution and consumption of private and public texts during the Enlightenment. The volume emerged from the 2015 Baskerville Society Conference and is part of LUP’s ‘Eighteenth-Century Worlds’ peer-reviewed series which promotes innovative research from a variety of historical, theoretical and critical perspectives.
The volume considers how the processes of both writing and printing contributed to the creation of cultural identity and taste, assisted the spread of knowledge, and furthered political, economic, and social change in Britain and beyond. Collectively the chapters contribute to our understanding of eighteenth-century communication by considering writing and printing in parallel rather than opposition as they are usually portrayed. The volume’s originality is rooted in its diversity and scope and the chapters offer a mix of materials in relation both to geography and genre which allow cross-cultural comparisons and thereby a novel narrative on the nature of communication.
The researcher’s own chapter, ‘Private pleasures and portable presses: do-it-yourself printers in the eighteenth-century’, uses primary and secondary historical sources, and contextualizes the research against established typographic discourse in order to discuss how printing, one of the most highly-skilled and closely policed of eighteenth-century trades, became the craft most engaged with by amateurs. It sheds new light on the role of the lay-printer in industrial progress; reflects on what they produced, their motivations for so doing; and the intellectual and technological environment that enabled their work. Taking a prosopographic approach it brings together individuals—Monarchs, middling-sorts, and the man-in-the-street—involved in amateur printing, revealing the breadth of their engagement and the social and cultural significance of this engagement, thereby challenging long-held misconceptions that printing was a closed profession.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -