In Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture, Jonathan Yeager explores the workings of the book trade in the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world through an in-depth analysis of the literary production of one of colonial America's most prolific authors. This case study approach gives this interesting new investigation a twofold audience. While scholars of the history of the book will find fascinating Yeager's untangling of the complex of factors shaping the book trade in this period, American religious historians will appreciate not only his discussion of evangelicalism's role in this enterprise but also his novel perspective on the well-known writings of Jonathan Edwards.

Although Yeager takes Edwards as his subject, he focuses not on his exhaustively analyzed theological ideas but on his publications as material objects. He argues that Edwards's creative intellect cannot alone explain his success as an author. “In reality, the favorable reception of his books had just as much to do with the way they were packaged and marketed as with the content that they represented” (149). Their appearance in print primarily depended on the cooperation of a network of individuals who financed, printed, promoted, and sold them. Although Edwards attempted to supervise this process, the publication of his writings and their success or failure in the marketplace was to a significant degree out of his control. In this regard, the eighteenth-century book trade looks remarkably similar to today's market. Even though the role of “publisher” in the modern sense of the term had not yet fully emerged, the relationship between content, financing, production, and marketing that defines the modern publishing industry appears firmly established. Yeager's primary contribution is his detailed analysis of these activities and of the choices made by individuals who undertook them.

Yeager focuses his analysis on the work of three men whose cooperative efforts were responsible for the publication of many of Edwards's mature writings. Samuel Kneeland, a printer who issued the majority of Edwards's texts published in Boston during the eighteenth century, shaped in important ways the public reception of these works (52). “When customers purchased one of Edwards's publications that Kneeland had printed,” Yeager aptly observes, “it would have been impossible for them to read the author's words in isolation, without coming into contact with the physical aspects of his thoughts presented on the printed page” (27). Choices about size, binding material, paper quality, and page composition determined a text's appearance as a material object as well as its sale price. Printers made these and other risky choices based upon an assessment of the likely audience, the advance subscribers, and the amount of available financing for a book. Kneeland on occasion financed one of Edwards's publications; his most ambitious solo production was Religious Affections. However, a wealthy Boston merchant and bookseller named Daniel Henchman more commonly acted as promoter and financier of Edwards's writings, who in turn hired Kneeland to do the printing. Henchman's most notable project was The Life of David Brainerd. It attracted an unusually large number of advance subscribers and earned him, Yeager estimates, “at least £330 in Lawful Money.” In this instance, Yeager notes, “Henchman practically functioned as a colonial American publisher” (70).

The third participant in this network was Thomas Foxcroft, pastor at Boston's First Congregational Church, who acted as Edwards's literary agent, editor, and proofreader. Edwards's disappointment with the publication of Faithful Narrative convinced him of the importance of a reliable agent to oversee the entire production process. Although the sponsorship of this text by several prominent evangelical leaders and its publication in London (the center of the transatlantic book trade) “gave Edwards unprecedented exposure as an author and contributed to his international reputation,” the text itself contained errors, most notably on its title page (80). Edwards subsequently shifted his locus of publication to Boston, a move that reveals, Yeager observes, the importance of geography to the successful production of his works. Edwards was unable to exercise any control over the production of Faithful Narrative because he could not communicate in a timely fashion with the editors who supervised its printing. Boston's closer proximity allowed him to oversee operations more directly, and he regularly instructed Foxcroft on details of the printing process. At times, however, this micromanagement was counterproductive, for Edwards's penchant for high quality paper and large margins tended to drive up prices.

Prices and sales, although important considerations, were not the only factors shaping the production of Edwards's writings. These three men were joined in a network of shared religious interests. They developed an effective working relationship largely because of their common concern to promote the Gospel. After Edwards's death, several persons who shared this religious interest, such as Edwards's disciple Samuel Hopkins and his son Jonathan Jr., attempted to direct the posthumous publication of his writings, but they could not sustain the successful operation of this Boston-based evangelical publishing enterprise. In the closing decades of the century, therefore, publication of Edwards's writings shifted to new locations, most prominently Scotland where Presbyterian minister John Erskine successfully created a new evangelical network that included Jonathan Edwards Jr., booksellers based in Edinburg and London, and the prominent English Baptist John Ryland Jr.

“All Edwards's publications,” Yeager argues, “should be seen as the offshoots of relationships that authors and editors had with specific booksellers and printers” (xiii). This case study clearly reveals the nature of these relationships and their centrality to the eighteenth-century book trade. It also rests on a prodigious amount of research. Although Yeager at times overwhelms the reader with nonessential detail, he has conducted much useful detective work. He has catalogued all of Edwards's pre–1800 publications in Britain, the English colonies, and Europe, which are listed in a lengthy appendix that includes not only publication information but also the size of each text. His discussion of the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate copies of a text and how a reprint differs from a subsequent edition or a new imprint is also significant, for these variants make it difficult to judge the popularity of a particular work. “When considering all these complicating factors,” Yeager concludes, “it is not easy to say with certainty which of Edwards's works in the eighteenth century should be deemed the most popular” (9). Nevertheless, through the combined efforts of booksellers, printers, and editors, these works became steady sellers that influenced the rise of evangelical religion in this period.