In 1700 as in 1800 England was engaged in a long and bitter war with France; William III fought to defend a revolution, William Pitt fought to suppress one. Pitt's greatest enemy described his opponents in terms of contempt as a nation of shopkeepers, but they accepted the description with pride. The transformation of the retail trades was less dramatic than that of the productive industries, but no less profound. In 1800, it was still incomplete, and was to be so until the modern pattern of distribution and sales was established by the building of the railways. For most of the eighteenth century, England's economy retained its traditional regional pattern, and only slowly was the country's economic geography changed by the imperatives of massproduction. Of that change the book trade was a harbinger. While most goods were still consumed in the locality of their production, the book trade historically dealt in products manufactured in bulk and distributed widely.

By the standards of 1700, the book trade was a large-scale massproduction industry; in 1800 it was not, but the booksellers had by then unwittingly pioneered the development of nationwide distribution. The social, political, and cultural influence of this achievement was out of all proportion to its economic scale. Although regional cultures survived, a uniform national culture was superimposed upon them through the uniformity of the printed word. The London newspapers, distributed by the Post Office, became a national medium of information, opinion, and advertising. Their advertising function was of exceptional value to the booksellers.