Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Images of London in medieval English literature
- 2 London and the early modern stage
- 3 London and the early modern book
- 4 London and poetry to 1750
- 5 Staging London in the Restoration and eighteenth century
- 6 London and narration in the long eighteenth century
- 7 London and nineteenth-century poetry
- 8 London in the Victorian novel
- 9 London in Victorian visual culture
- 10 London in poetry since 1900
- 11 London and modern prose, 1900-1950
- 12 Immigration and postwar London literature
- 13 Writing London in the twenty-first century
- 14 Inner London
- Guide to further reading
- Index
3 - London and the early modern book
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Images of London in medieval English literature
- 2 London and the early modern stage
- 3 London and the early modern book
- 4 London and poetry to 1750
- 5 Staging London in the Restoration and eighteenth century
- 6 London and narration in the long eighteenth century
- 7 London and nineteenth-century poetry
- 8 London in the Victorian novel
- 9 London in Victorian visual culture
- 10 London in poetry since 1900
- 11 London and modern prose, 1900-1950
- 12 Immigration and postwar London literature
- 13 Writing London in the twenty-first century
- 14 Inner London
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Summary
For the first two centuries of its existence, the printed book in England was overwhelmingly an artifact of London. With a few relatively specialised exceptions, the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge being the most important, before 1695 printing was restricted by law to the capital city. While the letter of the law was not always decisive - the Marprelate Tracts, for example, came from clandestine operators who moved about the country, and Charles I's army trundled along a royalist press operated by Leonard Lichfield as it marched - for the most part the production of books was a practice in and of the metropolis. In consequence, as the city grew into a great European capital and as print developed into a central element of its everyday life, the character of the one substantially shaped the character of the other. Markets, modes of publishing, genres, audiences, literary sensibilities, reading practices - all these and more came into being as aspects of London life, and in turn London life was transformed by them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London , pp. 50 - 66Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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