In Early Modern Britain, new publication channels were developed and new textual genres established themselves. News discourse became increasingly more important and reached wider audiences, with pamphlets as the first real mass media. Newspapers appeared, first on a weekly and then on a daily basis. And scientific news discourse in the form of letters exchanged between fellow scholars turned into academic journals. The papers in this volume provide state-of-the art analyses of these developments.
The first part of the volume contains studies of early newspapers that range from reports of crime and punishment to want ads, and from traces of religious language in early newspapers to the use of imperatives. The second part is devoted to pamphlets and provides detailed analyses of news reporting and of impoliteness strategies. The last section is devoted to scientific news discourse and traces the early publication formats in their various manifestations.

Carol Percy, University of Toronto, in Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2 (2011):
This well-focused collection comprehends a rich range of subtopics and perspectives [...]. Demonstrating the value of sharp focus and rich context, the collection's contributors employ a range of pragmatic methods. The entire volume reminds us that identifying and analysing trends in new discourse has been facilitated by the increasing availability of digitised texts. It is fitting that the collection is dedicated to Udo Fries, a pioneer in the study of early English newspapers and "the driving force" (p. viii) behind Zurich English Newspaper corpus, drawn on by several contributors here. Indeed, the proliferation of digitised texts underscores the importance of carefully complied corpora.