This twelfth volume in the Print Networks series comprises a range of papers from recent conferences on the early modern book trade. Collectively, they explore the practices and perceptions of print production, the circulation of texts and connections between book-trade personnel in Britain and Europe between the late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. Each essay offers insights, specific to era and location, into the ways in which book-trade actors ultimately shaped the meaning of the texts that they produced. Together, the chapters reveal commonalities in a trade experiencing widespread transformation from one that was relatively small, limited by legislation and interdependent with its European counterparts, to one that grew in size numerically and geographically and was increasingly specialized and localized.

The volume is divided into two sections. Part One, 'Practices and Perceptions' offers chapters that examine the practices of authors, translators, producers and collectors, and the perceptions of book-trade personnel. Part Two, 'Connections', explores the shifting geographical networks across the trade over the early modern period and their implications for readers.

The essays in this collection seek to shed light on the ways in which the early modern book trade both intervened in and shaped the production and circulation of texts, ultimately informing their meaning. In one way, each essay contributes a single case study to a world of print that stretched across national boundaries and several centuries. But in other ways, these essays repeat variants of the same story - of businessmen and women connecting and collaborating, developing a clear sense of their place in the world, and using print to transport their readers.

Available in the UK from The British Library.