The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World 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.
The Colonial Book in the Atlantic
World also traces the histories of literary and learned
culture, censorship and "freedom of the press," and literacy and
orality.
Contributors:
Hugh Amory
Ross W. Beales, The College of the Holy Cross
John Bidwell, Princeton University Library
Richard D. Brown, University of Connecticut
Charles E. Clark, University of New Hampshire
James N. Green, Library Company of Philadelphia
David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School
Russell L. Martin, Southern Methodist University
E. Jennifer Monaghan, Brooklyn College of The City University of
New York
James Raven, University of Essex
Elizabeth Carroll Reilly, Hardwick, Massachusetts
A. Gregg Roeber, Pennsylvania State University
David S. Shields, University of South Carolina
Calhoun Winton, University of Maryland