English Press in the Eighteenth Century PDF
Preview English Press in the Eighteenth Century
The English Press in the Eighteenth Century Jeremy Black CROOM HELM London &.. Sydney ©1987JeremyBlack CroomHelmLtd, ProvidentHouse BliuellRaw Beckenham, Kent BR3 lAT CroomHelm Australia, 44-50Waterloo Road, North Ryde, 2113, New SouthWales BritishLibraryCataloguingin PublicationData Black,Jeremy TheEnglish pressin the eighteenthcentury. 1. Press-England-History-18th century I. Title 072 PN5116 ISBN0-7099-3924-8 PrintedandboundinGreatBritainbyMackaysofChathamLtd, Kent Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Preface 1. DevelopmentoftheMetropolitanPress 1 2. 'AsFullasan Egg':BalancingtheContentsofthePress 25 3. HoldinguptheTruestPortraitsofMen'sMinds 51 4. SourcesandDistribution;CostandCirculation 87 5. ThePressandtheConstitution 113 6. ControllingthePress: CensorshipandSubsidies 135 7. ThePressandEurope 197 8. English Enlightenment or Fillers? Improvement, MoralityandReligion 245 9. Conclusion: A ChangingPressAlteringSociety? 277 Bibliography 309 IndexofTitles 317 Trip to Scarborough, the manager in affliction, and no song no supper. The royal nuptials, slack rope vaulting, and the King and cobler. East India stock, board and lodging, and kitchen utensils. The fugitive, Earl Macartney's embassy to China, and a schoolmaster wanted. Pleasures of imagination, a simple exposi tion of St Athanasius's creed, and a chaplaincyfor sale. Treasury chambers, transparent orrery, and every man his own gardener. Irish poplin warehouse, view ofthe prophecies, and three letters to Mr Pitt. Pocket peerage of Great Britain and Ireland, the impenetrable secret, and the whig-club. Independentfreeholders, to sail for Philadelphia, andJohn Hunter'sinfallible preventative. Foreign wines, sea bathing, and national calamities. Rheumatic Tincture, reports of cases, and the history of antient Greece. Sketch of the last campaign, a capital collection of pictures, and paperhangingsfor the springtrade. Poems intheScottish dialect, NippleLiniment,andboardandlodgingforalady. Lawofcorpor ations, patent watches, and repertory of arts. Essence of pearl, a servant out of livery, and book-keeping at leisure hours. A des irable farm, treatise on tithes, and the next presentation to a valuable rectory. The travellers at home, thirty guineas bounty, and England preserved. Hodge-podge: or, the first page ofa Daily paper, Leeds Mercury, 9 May 1795 To Sarah Acknowledgements I am grateful to a large number offriends, colleagues, archivists, librarians and owners ofmanuscriptswithout whomit would have beenimpossibletowritethis book. Itis notpossibletoname more thanasmallnumberofthosewhohavehelped. lowe muchto Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Northumberland, Earl Walde grave, Lady Lucas, the trustees of the Wentworth Woodhouse CollectionandJohnWeston-Un.derwoodforpermissiontoconsult their papers. Peter Borsay, Grayson Ditchfield, Michael Harris, David Hayton, DerekJarrett, MauriceMilne, David Pearson and Peter Thomas read earlier drafts of all or part of this work and their comments have been of the greatest assistance. This book owes much to the kind hospitality of the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford. Professor Fleury rendered great assistance in Paris. A large number offriends aided the course of research, especially by providing invaluable hospitality. I would particularly like to mention Peter Bassett, Richard Berman, John Blair, Tony Brown, Jonathan Dent, Robert Gildea, Anthony Gross, Dan and Stella Hollis, HaroldJames, James Kellock, Max King, James Lawrie, Jeremy Mayhew, William Salomon, Peter Spear, Mark Stocker, Alan Welsford and Paul Zealander. My parents were as ever extremely helpful. Richard Stoneman has beenanexemplarypublisher. TheStaffTravelandResearchFund ofDurhamUniversityandtheTwentySevenFoundationprovided usefulassistance. Thesecretaries in the Durham department, par ticularlyWendyDuery, displayedgreatpatienceincopingwithmy drafts. The book is dedicated to Sarah for being herself. ix Abbreviations Add. Additional Manuscripts AE Paris, Quai d'Orsay, Archives des Affaires Etrangeres AN Paris, Archives Nationales Ang. Angleterre AST.LM.Ing. Turin, Archivo di Stata, Lettere Ministri, Ing hilterra BL. London, British Library, Department of Manu scripts Bod!. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts C(H)Mss. Cholmondely (Houghton) Manuscripts Chewton Chewton Mendip, Chewton House, papers of James, first Earl Waldegrave CJ Commons Journals Cobbett W. Cobbett, Parliamentary History of England from 1066 to 1803 (36 vols., 1806-20) CP Correspondance Angleterre CRO County Record Office CUL Cambridge, University Library EHR English Historical Review HHStA Vienna, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv HJ HistoricalJournal L Lucas papers U LordsJournals PMLA Publications ofthe Modern LanguageAssociation ofAmerica PRO Public Record Office, State Papers RA Windsor Castle, Royal Archives, Stuart Papers Raw!. Rawlinson letters Sheffield Sheffield City Library, Wentworth Woodhouse papers SRO Edinburgh, Scottish Record Office TRHS Transactions ofthe Royal Historical Society xi xii Abbreviations Weston Iden Green, Kent, house of John Weston Underwood Underwood, papers of Edward Weston. Note on Currency Prices are given in eighteenth-century British units of currency. £1=20 shillings (sh)=240 pennies (d). Therefore 6d=21h new pence, 1sh=5 new pence. Note on Dates Until the 1752 reform of the calendar Britain conformed to Old Style, which was eleven days behind New Style, the Gregorian calendar used in most ofthe rest ofEurope. Until the reform all dates given are Old Style apart from those marked (ns). The conventionbywhichtheEnglishNewYearbeganon25Marchhas been ignored, and I have given it as starting on 1January. Preface Upon the whole, ifI cannot boast ofhaving produced edifying strains of morality, dissertations of sound indefeazable criticism, and papersofexquisite mirth and humour, I hope, at least, the whole planhas beenconductedwith a strictregard to decency, and without any offence against virtue or good man ners. Arthur Murphy, Gray's Inn Journal, 21 September 1754 This book seeks to provide a general introduction to the eighteenth-century English press. In a work of this length it has not been possible to cover all aspects ofthe subject. Such a task, demanding knowledgeofawide rangeofdisciplines, hasnotbeen attemptedfor many years, andstudies ofthe presshave tended to be of two types. The first, devoted to the press and politics, is predominantly metropolitan in its interests, the second, con centratingon issues ofproduction and ownership, largely so. The most recent study of the London press, the excellent thesis of Michael Harris, to be published as London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole: A Study in the Origins of the Modern English Press, treats metropolitan developments as crucial.1 There has been no attempt to build on the interesting studies of the pro vincial press in the first halfofthe century produced by Cranfield and Wiles. This workseeksto treat London and provincialpapers side by side. Provincial papers took most of their news from London publications and the organisation of this news was dictated by the arrival of the London posts. London newspapers circulated in the provinces. And yet provincial printers were not simply scissors and paste men. They produced readable, inter esting and, in some cases, campaigning newspapers. Several pro vincial papers enjoyed justifiedfame. Across much ofBritain the presswas a matter ofprovincial papers. Itis dangerous to discuss the political or social influence of the press without considering these papers. Most specialist paperswere ofcourse metropolitan. The first number of the opposition weekly the Yorkshire Freeholder, published in York in 1780, claimed, 'A periodical xiii xiv Preface essayist, printing his lucubrations at the distance of two hundred miles from the metropolis, will undoubtedly be thought a literary phenomenon.'2 The Country Spectator, which was published in Gainsborough in 1792-3, made similar claims. In tenns of news paper publication provincial paperswere singularly unvarying: no dailies, Sundays or evening papers, none devoted largely to economic or literary news. However, the generalist provincial papers developed markedly during the century, particularly in endingthemonopolyofLondonopinionsintheircolumns,anditis impossible to consider the press without discussing them. For reasonsofspaceIhaveconcentratedonEnglishnewspapers. Historianshaveselectedvariouseventsanddatesasmarkingthe arrival of the modern British press. The decision that this book would be devoted to the eighteenth century does not entail any suggestionthat 1800wasacrucialdate. Thepressofthe 18005was verysimilarto thatoftheprecedingdecade bothinLondon andin the provinces. New newspapers were beingfounded on both sides ofthe divide. Montrose had its first periodical in 1793, Greenock andArbroathin1799andInvernessin1807.Therewasnobreakin terms of circulation or technology. The decision to end with the century reflects rather a need to limit the scopeofthestudyand a scepticism concerning the idea of crucial dates in this period. Historians discussing the press of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries stresschange and modernity and make much of the great expansion in the number of copies produced in the country.However, thiswasoftenamatterofmoreofthesame,and a reader of eighteenth-century newspapers might be forgiven for stressingcontinuity rather than change. Newspapers, beingrecog nisable, are seen often as a 'modernising' force and a sign of the modernity of the eighteenth century, while the newspaper form itselfisregardedasbecomingmodern. Alltheseassumptionscanbe questioned. A flexible approach to the problem of definition has been adopted. There are several possible bases for differentiating be tween newspapers and other periodicals, including frequency of appearance, size, content and payment of stamp duty. Joseph Frank defined a newspaper as being printed, appearingat regular and frequent intervals and concentrating on currentevents.3That might appear a reasonable definition and yet journals that are widelyacceptedasnewspapersdidanddonotdevotethemselvesto current affairs only. Items characteristic of eighteenth-century
The list of books you might like
