What we have here is the second of a new series Print Networks edited by Peter Isaac and Barry McKay. It aims to publish papers given at the annual seminars on the British Book Trade. If the volume before us is anything to go by, it looks like being a very valuable series. Those interested in library history as well as the history of the book are already indebted to the St. Paul′s Bibliographies in Winchester for publishing what has to be described as highly specialised material appealing to a minority of scholars, but this volume should have a much wider clientele since it is simultaneously issued by Oak Knoll Press, Delaware for circulation in North and South America, as well as the Philippines.
Here are 13 presentations covering different historical aspects of the British book trade. The authors are similarly varied in their backgrounds and experience, some being librarians or library educators, others reflecting their publishing or bookselling backgrounds, and yet others being academics who specialise in the history of the book trade. Geographical areas covered include Kent and the Weald, Cumbria, Manchester, Wales and parts of Scotland. Sheila Hingley, Canterbury Cathedral librarian, writes fascinatingly about the parish library of Elham which, along with that of Preston‐next‐Wingham, is kept in the Cathedral Library, these being two of only five parish libraries surviving in Kent. Going north to Manchester, Michael Powell and Terry Wyke present us with an account of the recollections of James Weatherley, a working‐class bookseller in Manchester. Weatherley′s manuscript has been deposited in Chetham′s Library since 1885: <?tlb=12.7pt>since Powell is currently Chetham′s librarian, and Wyke lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University, we can rely on the accuracy of this splendid essay which includes numerous quotations from the bookseller′s recollections.
All 13 articles in this volume are interesting and valuable in their various ways, and it is really invidious to select any for special mention. But I must also refer to R.J. Goulden′s substantial account of print culture in the Kentish Weald, which is embellished with sketch maps and a tabulation. The author was formerly at the Public Record Office and now works on the English Short‐Title Catalogue project at the British Library, so he knows what he is talking about. Joint‐editor Peter Isaac writes about Charles Elliot and Spilsbury′s Antiscorbutic Drops! Elliot was an Edinburgh bookseller and publisher born in 1748, and if you want to know more about Francis Spilsbury and his Improved Antiscorbutic Drops you must read Peter Isaac on the subject. Incidentally, those who imagine this as a dry‐as‐dust book should perish the thought! The pages are full of fascinating reading.
This is a book which would have delighted Dr Paul Kaufman, one‐time professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a library historian who paid many visits to the UK, and wrote widely on book clubs, coffee houses as reading centres, reading trends and the cathedral and parish libraries of tradition. The Library Association did the profession a service in 1969 by publishing his book Libraries and their Users. St. Paul′s Bibliographies have performed a similar and equally valuable service by issuing The Reach of print. Yes, Kaufman would have revelled in this book and so, I am sure, will many of today′s library and literary historians.
