A History of the Book in America

<i>The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World</i> carries the interrelated stories of publishing writing and reading from the beginning of the colonial period in America up to 1790. Three major themes run through the volume: the persisting connections between the book trade in the Old World and the New evidenced in modes of intellectual and cultural exchange and the dominance of imported chiefly English books; the gradual emergence of a competitive book trade in which newspapers were the largest form of production; and the institution of a “culture of the Word” organized around an essentially theological understanding of print authorship and reading complemented by other frameworks of meaning that included the culture of republicanism. <i>The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World</i> also traces the histories of literary and learned culture censorship and “freedom of the press” and literacy and orality.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Contributors:<br/>Hugh Amory<br/>Ross W. Beales The College of the Holy Cross<br/>John Bidwell Princeton University Library<br/>Richard D. Brown University of Connecticut<br/>Charles E. Clark University of New Hampshire<br/>James N. Green Library Company of Philadelphia<br/>David D. Hall Harvard Divinity School<br/>Russell L. Martin Southern Methodist University<br/>E. Jennifer Monaghan Brooklyn College of The City University of New York<br/>James Raven University of Essex<br/>Elizabeth Carroll Reilly Hardwick Massachusetts<br/>A. Gregg Roeber Pennsylvania State University<br/>David S. Shields University of South Carolina<br/>Calhoun Winton University of Maryland