THE CONCEPT of an ‘English urban renaissance’ during the long eighteenth century is a helpful framework for a study of how John Baskerville and other provincial printers interacted with the predominantly urban environment within which they lived and worked. First identified by Professor Peter Borsay in an article in 1977, the urban renaissance was examined in more detail in Borsay's monograph of 1989. In 1977, Borsay explained that the English urban renaissance was ‘a tentative thesis which I hope will help to disturb certain entrenched assumptions about post-Restoration urban society, as well as promote further investigation into the history of the town during this period’. The article focused primarily on the ways in which leisure and luxury influenced cultural developments in provincial towns. In 1990, introducing a reprint of his article in an edited collection, Borsay explained that his 1989 monograph

One of the main innovations of Borsay's thesis was its focus on the provincial towns of England during a key period of their development when they began to break free from commercial and cultural dependence on London. This is particularly evident in the fields of printing history and print culture. Borsay's proposition contextualises two key aspects of print culture: the production of books and other printed materials, and the acquisition and consumption of print. It also helps to explain how new markets for provincial print emerged. In terms of the consumption of print, the urban renaissance provides a credible framework within which the middle and upper strata of provincial society developed a taste for fashionable leisure activities, including reading books, magazines and newspapers.

In terms of book production, the urban renaissance covers the period during which printing spread into provincial England following the lapse of the Printing (Licensing) Act in 1695. The Act was ‘one of a series of measures passed in the early 1660s designed to reinforce the Crown's control over various activities and to replace the executive decrees which had fallen into desuetude during the Civil War and Interregnum’.