The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland

Studies the book trade during the age of Fergusson and Burns

Over 40 leading scholars come together in this volume to scrutinise the development and impact of printing, binding, bookselling, libraries, textbooks, distribution and international trade, copyright, piracy, literacy, music publication, women readers, children's books and cookery books.The 18th century saw Scotland become a global leader in publishing, both through landmark challenges to the early copyright legislation and through the development of intricate overseas markets that extended across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Scots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Dublin and Philadelphia amassed fortunes while bringing to international markets classics in medicine and economics by Scottish authors, as well as such enduring works of reference as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Entrepreneurship and a vigorous sense of nationalism brought Scotland from financial destitution at the time of the 1707 Union to extraordinary wealth by the 1790s. Publishing was one of the country's elite new industries.

Key Features

• Discusses copyright and piracy with new data at a time when intellectual property laws are returning to 18th-century precedents
• Provides new understandings of Scotland's early modern readerships, including women's libraries, music literacy, and the way in which Scots found in the growth of literacy an international marketplace for intellectual property
• Original scholarship and previously unpublished source material on secular Gaelic print
• 16 exclusive full colour images of rare Scottish bindings from private collections, 25 additional colour plates and 60 black and white illustrations