A significant quantity of recent work on the history of the book has added valuably to the discipline, by emphasizing the importance of nonbook and ephemeral printing to the sustainability of the trade and by simply enlarging the range of items that fall under the scrutiny of book historians—to the point where the long-held doubts over whether “book history” as a term corresponds usefully to the studies and practices of historians of printing must surely have become overwhelming. James Raven's new book, Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England, which focuses on nonbook printing in the eighteenth century and the role of the print trade's products as economic technologies and instruments, contributes further to this ongoing expansion, while simultaneously offering an important argument about the cultural impact of printing: that the print trade can illuminate considerably more of eighteenth-century economic history than just itself. In a study that fills in one of the spaces left by the same author's The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade (2007), Raven assesses the contribution of the print trades generally, and especially “jobbing” printing—small-item printing done by the job—to the development of English economic life between 1680 and 1800.

Raven rightly identifies economics as a crucially neglected area in the social history of knowledge and information; in particular, he draws attention to the role of print in extending, normalizing, and stabilizing an enormous variety of financial instruments and transactions, as well as broader social and cultural attitudes towards finance, trade, and commerce. In writing to address this need, Raven has produced a broad account of the range of places where economic life and practice overlap with the print trades over the course of a long century rather than a series of detailed case studies. The book is organized into a series of thematic chapters that range freely over the whole of the eighteenth century, beginning with a valuable overview of the role of jobbing printing in the practice and economics of the printing house itself and covering the production of stationery and ledgers; the various forms of print produced for the City of London, including banks, insurance offices, and the City authorities; advertising in London and the provinces; the requirements of the advertisers themselves; commercial journalism and price currents; business and bookkeeping manuals; office guides, directories, timetables, and gazetteers; writings on economic theory and the role of trade in national life; and social attitudes to commerce, wealth, and investment. The increase in the volume and variety of these printed forms is traced alongside English economic development in the eighteenth century (the latter in particular is viewed in what Raven confesses are unfashionably developmental terms.)

Raven's scholarship and command of his material, particularly his work in local record offices and regional archives, is expert and impressive; the sheer volume of printed materials linked to trade, commerce, and investment adduced here go a long way toward making his case about the essential role played by print in enabling the new forms of economic activity of the eighteenth century. The link between innovation in the print trades and economic growth is especially persuasive in Raven's account of the development of provincial advertising networks through London agents and coffeehouses. Provincial newspapers needed advertising to survive, and the spread of London advertising to the regions demonstrates convincingly the growing role of print in enabling transactions at a distance and in building economic trust without the need for the face-to-face or family contacts that were essentially constitutive of the economic world of late-seventeenth-century England.

The sections move from the particular to the general, from discussions of small-item printing and stationery production to the metropolitan to the national context, and to the broader cultural discussions around the ethics and social position of eighteenth-century business and businessmen. This mode of organization is sensible, although it does not make for a strongly chronological account. It also means that the most convincing aspects of the study occur in the middle and at the end. As Raven disarmingly admits in his conclusion, the often frustrating and fragmentary nature of the evidence makes his larger case difficult to prove. Survival rates for the small-item jobbing printing discussed in the early chapters are often very low, although this should not, as Raven says, be taken as evidence that these printed forms were necessarily ephemeral or disposable; on the contrary, many of them are dedicated to record keeping (accounting ledgers), certification, or authorization (in financial and legal documents especially). In particular, it is difficult to demonstrate the real-world effects of small-item printing, which tends not to generate obvious cultural responses. The consequence for this study was, at least for the present reviewer, to leave him intuitively convinced of its thesis—that jobbing printing helped to stabilize and give credibility to new forms of financial instruments and transactions—but feeling that proof of the actual change wrought by these forms in contemporary mentalités remains tantalizingly out of reach. Nevertheless, this book makes the argument for the importance of jobbing printing as strongly and as well as it can be made in the light of current evidence. This is a rare instance of an entirely scholarly book at a trade price, and it will be invaluable to historians of the book and of considerable interest to economic historians.