Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The book trade formed a small but far-reaching part of Britain's industrializing economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The paper in books was made from linen and cotton rags, so as the textile industries industrialized, as cheaper cloth and clothes became more available, and as people discarded old cloth and clothes more rapidly and more often, the raw materials for an increased scale of book production in the late eighteenth century were created. During the Napoleonic Wars, when the importation of rags from France and the Continent was curtailed, the prices of paper and books rose sharply, which created economic incentives for inventing the Fourdrinier paper-making machine, perfecting the process of stereotyping, and finally harnessing steam to create the power press. Power presses immediately transformed newspaper production, but did not affect book production, which continued to rely on hand-powered presses until Robert Cadell bought and installed some steam-powered presses in 1830 at the Ballantyne Press to bring out a cheap edition of Scott's novels. At the period's beginning intaglio and copperplate engraving made illustrated books more attractive, and at its end in the 1820s the new process of steel engraving made them even more popular. Paper production was affected by the industrialization of textile manufacturing and by the greater use of paper ... log in or subscribe to read full text