The first thorough study of the book trade during the age of Fergusson and Burns.
The eighteenth 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.
Over forty leading scholars come together in this volume to examine the development of Scotland's book trade from 1707 to 1800.
Printing, binding, bookselling, libraries, textbooks, distribution and international trade, copyright, piracy, literacy, music publication, women readers, children's books and cookery books are among the many aspects of print culture that they scrutinize.