For financial and personal reasons, Eliot was keen that Adam Bede should be popular, but that aspiration necessarily brought the novel into competition both with popular culture and the popular fiction by women that Eliot had criticised in 1856. Adam Bede explicitly recognises the challenges of its publishing context, and seeks, whilst exploiting some of the interests of popular fiction, to educate its readers both about the responsibilities of the novelist and their fiction to practise a responsible form of realism, and the readers’ own capacity for more substantial fare. The overwhelming popularity of Mrs Poyser and her home-spun wisdom sites the novel’s popularity in the nostalgic appeal of country life, but primarily, as the reviewer Anne Mozley argues, in its developing the reader’s sympathy with ordinary people, and in establishing a link with the reader based in the harmonious creation of memories of familiar places and emotions.

A chronologically ordered account of the different phases of Curll’s activities in the trade.

This chapter focusses on Curll’s relations with the civic affairs of London. It gives a brief survey of his admission to a guild and position as a liveryman of the Cordwainer’s Company, outside the powerful body of Stationers. Further, it outlines his behaviour over a number of years in City and national elections, from 1710 to 1734, noting his tendency to veer between votes for opposition parties and those for pro-ministerial candidates, depending on the political climate and his personal situation. His relations with Robert Walpole are sketched out. Comparisons are drawn between his actions and those of representative figures in the trade, especially those with whom Curll worked regularly. Where appropriate, the distinct voting patterns of Stationers and Cordwainers are noted. A conclusion summarises the changing political stance across the first four decades of the century, both of Curll himself and of members of the Stationers’ bloc.

Introduction. The Introduction sets out the aims of the book. No attempt has previously been made to investigate the detailed operations of any major figure as evidenced by his or her day-to-day practice. This is an effort to fill that gap by exploring the career of Edmund Curll, and to go beyond the mainly biographic treatment he has received so far. It describes how the succeeding pages seek to consider various aspects of Curll’s publications in the context of the London publishing industry as it then operated. An account is given of the content of various chapters, as this will be given in the abstracts below. Among topics briefly outlined are the range of Curll’s lists, his dealings with the law, his connections with contemporary authors (major and minor), with a review the most important scholarship on the condition of publishers in the eighteenth century.

The central topic here is the entity known as ‘Grub Street’, referring to the milieu comprising figures in the book trade and to their output. Various ways of defining this term are outlined, including historical, sociological, topographical, national, legal, political, educational, technical, moral, and conceptual modes of approach. A brief comparison is made between English experience and the world of clandestine literature in France during the Enlightenment. The bookseller’s quarrels with Pope and Defoe are analysed, along with the notion of ‘Curlicism’, invented by Defoe and proudly adopted by Curll himself. A range of publishing stratagems and misleading devices are described to illustrate Curll’s practice. Two notable features are his proclivity for issuing wills of recently deceased figures of note; and his repeated insertion of ‘keys’ to scandalous materials he published on current celebrities.

The topic under consideration is Curll’s deployment of imprints, among the most important tools of his trade. He found it acceptable on many occasions to follow the conventional forms, along the lines of ‘London: printed for E. Curll, at the Dial and Bible against St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-street.’ However, there are many exceptions. This chapter discusses variant forms described by David Foxon. It itemises some cases where the imprint is incomplete or unreliable. They include, for example, works which have the same text but different names on the title-page; those in which Curll’s name appears and disappears in succeeding editions); and instances where a trade publisher such as James Roberts is found in the imprint on certain occasions, but is absent in others. Ways are described to identify Curll’s hand when his name is omitted. Along with comparatively innocent subterfuges, we find elsewhere what can be described as ‘false and misleading imprints’, a subject pioneered by Michael Treadwell.

This chapter describes ways in which Curll interacted with the book trade at large, and illustrates his methods as they relate to the common publishing practices then in operation. It is easier to spot the manner in which he differed from his colleagues than areas in which he resembled them. Under one crucial aspect, he never joined the mainstream: he was not a member of the Stationers’ Company, a fact whose implications underlie some of his publishing choices and his possible apprentices. In other respects, he went along with normal practices in the trade. Among other topics, attention is given to the scale of his output over time, pricing policies, his limited use of trade sales, his retail operations, some of his marketing strategies, and his legal problems, as compared with other booksellers. One section discusses his activities in co-publishing and his partnerships (longer or shorter) with figures such as Egbert Sanger, John Pemberton, and William Mears.

Further developing the theme of competition between Mboya, Odinga and their respective international networks and domestic power bases, this chapter explores the impact of the cultural Cold War on the politics of newly independent Kenya. Although mainly focused on the organisations and activities supported by Mboya’s network, most notably the East African Institute of Social and Cultural Affairs, it also discusses rival efforts by Odinga to use the press, publishing and training to strengthen his own position within Kenya’s fractious post-colonial politics. The chapter details the extent to which Mboya’s activities received funding through CIA front organisations. The chapter is particularly concerned with the ways in which Kenya’s debates about development, which were the source of the disputes between the KANU government and Odinga’s new opposition party, were shaped by the publications and organisations aligned to Mboya. As public awareness of the origins of Mboya’s funding grew from 1967, the chapter concludes with an examination of the increasing criticism made of him from both the left and right in Kenyan politics and the enforced closure of the EAISCA.

Chapter 4 examines twenty-first-century debates over canons, canon formations, and publishing in the writing of Bernardine Evaristo, Lemn Sissay, and Daljit Nagra. In particular, I pursue the aesthetic strategies they adopt to assert the centrality of Black British culture as a renewable canon in the making and remaking of Britishness. Conversely, the poets considered here also recognize how they operate within – and often seek to challenge – cultural institutions advancing precepts of diversity and inclusion even as their writing self-consciously acknowledges systemic oppression in contemporary Britain and the highly unequal domain of the publishing scene in particular. Whether in Evaristo’s novel in verse The Emperor’s Babe, Lemn Sissay’s public “landmark poems,” or Daljit Nagra’s British Museum, these authors lend to their work a progressive politics by excavating, revising, and transforming forgotten histories and counter-memories of violence for the sake of intervening in public discourses over race and national belonging.

Australia has a comparatively recent history of European settlement and English language development. Yet, it is already quite distinct. The different mixes of original dialects that came in during the early years, as well as the physical separation from other English-speaking regions, have allowed this distinctiveness to flourish. Regional variation within Australian English is still minor compared to other varieties, although local differences have been increasing. Contact with languages other than English has also been adding to the complex multilinguistic reality that is modern-day Australia. Recent years mark the rise of new multicultural identities for Australian English speakers in the form of migrant ethnolects and varieties of Aboriginal English. Such ethnically marked ways of speaking are no longer the consequence of second language learning but relate to attitudes around identity and cultural heritage.

Florence Price’s contributions to the keyboard literature range from pedagogical works for beginners, many of which she composed for her own students, to expansive multi-movement pieces that were written with the concert musician in mind. In addition to their varying levels of difficulty, variety also comes in the form of their stylistic influences. African American folk idioms are prevalent, as are the sound worlds of nineteenth century Romanticism and early twentieth-century chromatic experimentalism. As this chapter shows, Price’s keyboard music additionally sheds light on the influence of the publishing industry and the market for these works. Ultimately, however, Price’s keyboard output provides a window into her impetus as an educator and composer, and reveals Price the pianist and organist who frequently programmed her unpublished works in her own recitals and played for pleasure.

A cherished myth in devolved Scotland is that writers and artists were crucially responsible for the establishment of the new parliament. While there is some truth to this, understanding the full context requires looking beyond the literary texts typically viewed as pivotal in reviving national confidence. Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981) certainly impacted a small literary audience, but its status as a “national” novel emerged from broader print culture networks. To appreciate its political significance, we must consider magazines like Scottish International, which published extracts of Lanark in 1969, alongside cultural periodicals like Chapman and the Edinburgh Review, which integrated Gray’s political vision into their missions during the 1980s and 90s.This chapter considers a range of Scottish political writing that contributed to this process. Here, “political writing” refers not to grand rhetoric, but to the organised creation of a neo-national public that recognised itself. It encompassed literary novels, journalism, and philosophical essays, including Tom Nairn’s work and the Red Paper on Scotland, edited by Gordon Brown (1975). The Red Paper, published by the Edinburgh University Students Publication Board (EUSPB), was connected to numerous Edinburgh-based magazines and the literary publisher Polygon. By examining this network of magazines, campaign groups, and party factions (Labour and SNP), we can identify the discursive frameworks and political alliances that led to the Scottish Parliament’s establishment in 1999, tracing much of contemporary Scottish politics back to the writing, editing, and publishing efforts of prior decades.

This chapter examines the relationship between the Conservative Party and its intellectual publications from the 1940s to the 1970s, with a focus on articles, books, and pamphlets on Conservative ideas. The 1940s were formative, as Conservatives debated the importance of political writing, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) as the party’s in-house publisher. This allowed the Conservatives to position themselves as intellectual competitors to the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. The 1950s marked a high point, with groups like the One Nation and the Bow Group publishing influential works through the CPC, helping R. A. Butler establish a semi-independent framework for Conservative publications. However, from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, Conservative publishing became fragmented and was subjected to the ‘market test’. Under Edward Heath, a shift towards technocratic and market-oriented views weakened the CPC’s role in publishing ideological content.During the Thatcher era, Conservatives embracing neoliberalism saw the party as intellectually strong, but a shift towards relying on the publications of external think-tanks resulted in the narrowing of the field of Conservative writing and publishing.