Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800

Stephen W. Brown is Professor of English at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada Warren McDougall, born in Edinburgh, was a newspaper reporter in Canada and for many years an English teacher in Edinburgh. He attended the University of Western Ontario and the University of Edinburgh. His Edinburgh Ph.D. thesis in the mid 1970s - on Hamilton, Balfour and Neill - was the first modern study of the book trade in the Scottish Enlightenment, and he has subsequently written ground-breaking papers on the book in 18th century Scotland, including copyright litigation and the rise of the Scottish book trade, Scottish books for America, piracy and book smuggling, and Edinburgh medical publishing and the international book trade. He contributed articles on Scottish book trade figures to the New DNB, and is writing on the Scottish trade for the History of the Book in Britain vol. 5 and the History of the Book in America vol. 2, while his case study of a Scottish printer abroad will appear in A History of the Book in Canada vol. 1. He is writing a book on the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot and is indexing for publication the entries in Elliot’s letterbooks and ledgers. Recently he has had fellowships at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Antiquarian Society, and Trent University, Canada, and is currently an honorary fellow at the Centre for the History of the Book, Edinburgh University. He is secretary of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society.

• Plates; Figures; Tables; Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Introduction, Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall; Chapter One, The Emergence of the Modern Trade; Copyright and Scottishness, Warren McDougall; Inside the Printing House, John Morris; William Smellie: A Printer's Life, Stephen W. Brown; Paper, Stephen W. Brown; Bindings, William Zachs; The Glasgow Homer, Brian Hillyard; Richard Cooper Sr and Book Illustration, Joe Rock; Atlases, Map-makers and Map Engravers, Chris Fleet; Maps, Chris Fleet; John Kay, Caricaturist, Iain Gordon Brown; The Spread of Printing, Anette Hagan; Chapter Two, Developing a Marketplace for Books; Edinburgh, Warren McDougall; Bookselling in Early Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh, Richard Ovendon; The Business Papers of Bell & Bradfute, William Zachs; Glasgow, Michael Moss; Aberdeen and the North-East, Iain Beavan; The Gaelic Book, Ronald Black; Scottish Publishers in London, Richard B. Sher; Ireland, Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall; Chapter Three, Intellectual Exchanges and Scottish Authors Abroad; The Scottish-Dutch Trade, Esther Mijers; Scottish Authors in Germany, Thomas Ahnert; The Market for French Books, Stephen W. Brown; Hume's Political Discourses in France, Gilles Robel; Scottish Books and the Grand Tour, Iain Gordon Brown; Ossian in Europe, Howard Gaskill; Russia, Beatrice Teissier; Asia, Beatrice Teissier; America, Warren McDougall; The American Founders and Scottish Books, Terrence Moore; Canada, Fiona A. Black; Chapter Four, The Popular Press and the Public Reader; Literacy, Alexander Murdoch; Natural History, Natural Philosophy, and Readers, Matthew Eddy; Textbooks, Terrence Moore; Reading in Universities, Roger Emerson; Institutional Libraries, Murray C. T. Simpson; Private Libraries, Murray C. T. Simpson; Subscription and Circulating Libraries, K. A. Manley; Newspapers and Magazines, Stephen W. Brown; Edinburgh v the Advertiser: A Case Study, Martin Moonie; Cheap Print on Scottish Streets, John Scally; The Pamphlet, Iain Beavan; Pamphlet Wars in the 1790s, Gordon Pentland; Agricultural Pamphlets, Heather Holmes; Cookery Books, Catherine Brown; Children's Books, Brian Alderson; Chapter Five, Publishing the Enlightenment; Reading in Scottish Enlightenment, Mark Towsey; The 'Age of Criticism' and the Critical Reader: George Ridpath, Mark Towsey; Women's Reading, Mark Towsey; A Woman's Library in 1729: Grisel Erskine, Murray C. T. Simpson; Religion, Ann Matheson; Hugh Blair's Sermons, Ann Matheson; The Novel, Peter Garside; Adam Smith and Scottish Books on Political Economy, Richard B. Sher; Medicine, Fionna Macdonald; Agricultural Publishing, Heather Holmes; Archaeology in the Earlier Eighteenth Century, Iain Gordon Brown; The Journalistic Life: Thomas Blacklock, David Shuttleton; The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall; Chapter Six, Scottishness and the Trade; Print and Scotticisms, Marina Dossena; The Revival of Scotland's Older Literature, Alasdair MacDonald; Scots Poetry before Burns, Christopher Maclachlan; Robert Burns, G. Ross Roy; Music, David Johnson; Gaelic Secular Printing, Ronald Black; Contributors; Bibliography; Index.

It certainly provides much stimulation and food for thought about some neglected aspects of material and literary culture in the period. And for anyone with a professional interest in book culture in Scotland in the century after the Union and in the cultural and economic infrastructure which underpinned the era of the Scottish Enlightenment, this is likely long to remain essential reading.