In this magisterial history, Richard B. Sher breaks new ground for our understanding of the Enlightenment and the forgotten role of publishing during that period. "The Enlightenment and the Book" seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Life of Samuel Johnson" were made by their authors alone. To the contrary, Sher shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth century involved complex partnerships between authors and their publishers. Similarly, Sher demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking for a variety of reasons, ranging from accumulating profits to advancing human knowledge.

About the Author
Richard B. Sher is Distinguished Professor of History at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is the author of Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh.

Reviews
"A major achievement." - Times Literary Supplement "This is an exceptional piece of work. It is both an astonishing accumulation of informative detail and a multiplicity of lively interconnected narratives of authors, books, booksellers, printers and other subjects. It is a very useful reference book, with its nearly 150 pages of tables and bibliographies; it is also an engaging and stimulating read." - Antonia Forster, Review of English Studies "Discerningly illustrated, at once scholarly and accessible, this is an essential addition not only to eighteenth-century studies but also to the history of the book." - Atlantic.



Book Information
ISBN 9780226752532
Author Richard B. Sher
Format Paperback
Page Count 848
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 1247g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 4mm