The Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade

Making Novels in Eighteenth-Century Britain:
Puffers, Debauchers and Trade

James Raven, University of Essex
A lecture at the Clark Library

The makers of novels in eighteenth-century Britain were not, of course, simply the original writers. The pioneers of the novel very much included entrepreneurs with a sharp eye to market tastes. Many of these men and women were trained in printing and bookselling—but a surprising number were not. Of particular interest are those promoters of the early novel who had no previous experience of the book trade but regarded the novel as another commodity and another opportunity in an increasingly consumer-oriented society. Advertising, “puffing” and marketing tricks were essential weapons in the war between competing booksellers. The pell-mell manufacture of quickly written (and translated) fiction (much for new-fangled circulating libraries) led to accusations of the devaluation of literary achievement and taste. The final part of the lecture will assess the response to the commercial exploitation of this new thing called a “novel.”

James Raven, M.A., Ph.D., Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex, and the author of numerous books and articles on cultural history. He is especially well known for his writings on the history of publishing, bookselling, reading, and the social and cultural history of the novel. His publications include studies of Britain, Europe and the colonies. His most recent books include The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade 1450-1850 (2007); Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Book Collections since Antiquity (2004); London Booksellers and American Customers: Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748-1811 (2002); and, with Peter Garside and Rainer Schöwerling, The English Novel 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction (2000). He is currently working on a study of the novel as a commodity.

Professor Raven was formerly Reader in Social and Cultural History at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford; Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Munby Fellow in Bibliography and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is a member of the American Antiquarian Society and a founding Director of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. He has also held various visiting appointments in the United States, France and Britain. He is Director of the Cambridge Project for the Book Trust (research and publications on www.cambridgebook.demon.co.uk) and Director of the Mapping the Print Culture of Eighteenth-Century London project.