Amazon.com description: Product Description: These 17 essays by a group of international scholars offer new knowledge and insights into the history of the English book trade in the 18th century, a period that saw the rise of the professional writer. No collection can cover the full range of this topic, but there is a variety of subjects providing a historical context for the writing, printing, publishing, and distributing of books: women in the book trade, bankruptcy in bookselling, uses of newspaper advertizements to study the book trade, book reviewing and provincial readership of books and reviews. Among the literary figures considered are Pope, Johnson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne. Among the contributors are Patricia Hernlyund, G. Thomas Tanselle, K.I.D Maslen, Nicolas Barker, J.D. Fleeman, Thomas R. Adams and the editor.