Long after the invention of printing and its introduction into England, books were dear. In the' Privy Purse Accounts of Elizabeth of York,' published by Sir H. Nicolas, we find that, in 1505, twenty pence were given for a ' Primer' and a Psalter.' In 1505 twenty pence would have bought half a load of barley, and were equal to six days' work of a la bourer. In 1516 Fitzherbert's Abridg ment,' a large folio law-book, the first published, was sold for forty shillings. At that time forty shillings would have bought three fat oxen. Books gradually became cheaper as the printers ventured to rely upon a larger number of pur chasers. The exclusive privileges that were given to individuals for printing all sorts of books, during the reigns of Henry . VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth—although they were in accordance with the spirit of monopoly which characterized that age, and were often granted to prevent the spread of books—offer a proof that the market was not large enough to enable the producers to incur the risk of com petition. One with another, 200 copies may be estimated to have been printed of each book during the period we have been noticing; we think that proportion would have been quite adequate to the supply of the limited number of readers —to many of whom the power of reading was a novelty unsanctioned by the prao tioe of their forefathers.
II. The second period of the English press, from the accession of James I. to the Revolution, was distinguished by pedantry at one time, to which succeeded the violence of religions and political con troversy; and then came the profligate literature of the Restoration. The press was exceedingly active during the poli tico-religions contest There is, in the British Museum, a collection of 2000 vo lumes of Tracts issued between the years 1640 and 1660, the whole number of which several publications amounts to the enormous quantity of 30,000. The num ber of impressions of new books uncon nected with controversial subjects must have been very small during this period.
After the Restoration an act of parlia ment was passed that only twenty printers should practise their art in the kingdom. We see by a petition to parliament in 1666, that there were only 140 " working printers" in London. They were quite enough to produce the kind of literature which the court required.
At the fire of London, in 1666, the booksellers dwelling about St. Paul's lost an immense stock of books in quires, amounting, according to Evelyn, to the value of 200,0001., which they were ac customed to stow in the vaults of the me tropolitan cathedral, and of other neigh bouring churches. At that time the people were beginning to read again, and t to b' k ;—and as new capital rushed in to replace the consumed stock of books, there was once more considerable activity in printing. The laws that regulated the number of printers soon after fell into disuse, as they had long fallen into con tempt. We have before us a catalogue (the first compiled in this country) of "all the books printed in England since the dreadful fire, 1666, to the end of Trinity Term, 1680," which catalogue is continued to 1685, year by year. A great many—we may fairly say one-half—of these books, are single sermons and tracts. The whole number of books printed der , ing the fourteen years from 1666 to 1680, we ascertain, by counting, was 3550, of which 947 were divinity, 420 law, and 153 physic,—so that two-fifths of the whole were profhssional books; 397 were school-books, and 253 on subjects of geo graphy and navigation, including map. Taking the average of these fourteen years, the total number of works produced yearly was 253; but deducting the reprints, pamphlets, single sermons, and maps, we may fairly assume that the yearly aver age of new books was much under 100. Of the number of copies constituting an edition we have no record ; probably it must have been small, for the price of a book, as far as we can ascertain it, was considerable. In a catalogue, with prices, printed twenty-two years after the one we have just noticed, we find that the ordi nary cost of an octavo was five shillings.
III. We have arrived at the third stage of this rapid sketch—from the Revolution to the accession of George III.
This period will ever be memorable our history for the creation, in great part, of periodical literature. Till newspapers, and magazines, and reviews, and cyclo pedias were established, the people, even the middle classes, could not fairly be said to have possessed themselves of the keys of knowledge.
The publication of intelligence began during the wars of Charles I. and his Parliament. But the Mercuries ' of those days were little more than occasional pamphlets. Burton speaks of a " Pam phlet of News." Before the Revolution there were several London papers, regu lated, however, by privileges and gar veyors of the press. Soon after the be ginning of the eighteenth century (1709' London had one daily paper, fifteen three times a week, and one twice a week : this was before a stamp-duty was imposed on papers. After the stamp-duty in 1784 there were three daily papers, six weekly, and ten three times a week. Provincial newspapers had already been established in several places. In 1731, Cave, at his own risk, produced the first Magazine printed in England—the Gentleman's.' Its success was so great, that in the fol lowing year the booksellers, who could not understand Cave's project till they knew its value by experiment, set up a rival magazine, The London.' In 1749 the first Review, ' The Monthly,' was started; and in a few years was followed by The Critical.' The periodical literature of this period greatly reduced the number of merely temporary books ; and it had thus the advantage of imparting to our literature a more solid character. Making a pro portionate deduction for the pamphlets inserted in the catalogues already referred i to, it still appears that the great influx of periodical literature, although constitut ing a most important branch of literary commerce, had in some degree the effect of narrowing the publication of new books; and perhaps wholesomely so. It appears from a ' Complete Catalogue of Modern Books published from the begin ning of the century to 1756 ;'—from which " allpamphlets and other tracts" are excluded, that in these fifty-seven years 5280 new works appeared, which exhibits only an average of ninety-three new works each year. It seems probable that the numbers of an edition printed had been increased; for, however strange it may appear, the general prices of the works in this catalogue are as low, if not lower, than in a priced catalogue which we also have of books printed in the years 1702 and 1703. A quarto published in the first half of the last century seems to have averaged from 10s. to 12a. per volume an octavo, from 5a. to 6s. ; and a duodeci mo from 2s. 6d. to 3s. In the earlier catalogue we have mentioned, pretty much the same prices exist : and yet an excise had been laid upon paper; and the prices of authorship, even for the hum blest labours, were raised. We can only account for ihis upon the principle, that the publishers of the first half of the eighteenth century knew their trade, and, printing larger numbers, adapted their prices to the extension of the market. They also, in many cases, lessened their risk by publishing by subscription—a practice now almost gone out of use from the change of fashion, but possessing great advantages for the production of costly books. This was in many respects the golden age for publishers, when large and certain fortunes were made. Perhaps much of this proceeded from the publishers aim ing less to produce novelty than excellence —selling large impressiarisoffew books, and not distracting the public with their noisy competition in the manufacture of new wares for the market of the hour. Pub lishers thus grew into higher influence in society. They had long ceased to carry their books to Bristol or Stourbridge fairs, or to hawk them about the country in auctions. The trade of books had gone into regular commercial channels.