The central topic here is the entity known as ‘Grub Street’, referring to the milieu comprising figures in the book trade and to their output. Various ways of defining this term are outlined, including historical, sociological, topographical, national, legal, political, educational, technical, moral, and conceptual modes of approach. A brief comparison is made between English experience and the world of clandestine literature in France during the Enlightenment. The bookseller’s quarrels with Pope and Defoe are analysed, along with the notion of ‘Curlicism’, invented by Defoe and proudly adopted by Curll himself. A range of publishing stratagems and misleading devices are described to illustrate Curll’s practice. Two notable features are his proclivity for issuing wills of recently deceased figures of note; and his repeated insertion of ‘keys’ to scandalous materials he published on current celebrities.

Part III concerns the quarrel between Curll and Pope, which went on for almost thirty years, and raises significant issues, not just as it affected their careers, but also as it inflects the history of the book. These matters include the situation of both authors and publishers after the Copyright Act; the nature of piracy; the habit of (in effect) self-publishing that Pope acquired; the implications of anonymity, on both sides of the fence; the relations between elite and popular culture; and the literary portrayal of booksellers. Chapter 8 focusses on anonymity in the presentation of Pope’s poems and Curll’s publications. A brief introductory segment describes the historical valency of anonymous writing. The subsequent discussion traces a development that James McLaverty has characterised as ‘the blurring of authorship’, and shows how this is played out in The Dunciad and Curll’s responses to the work. Attention is given to other items by Pope that appeared anonymously or pseudonymously, together with attacks by Curll that constitute a reply in kind.