12. Afterword

Abstract

After the lapse of the Printing Act in 1695, printing, especially cheap printing, began to spread outside of London and become established in the regions. In the second half of the century, there were major booksellers issuing street literature titles in almost every area of the country. This afterword draws attention to some directions for future research. Preceding chapters have complicated easy assumptions about what actually counted as cheap print, for both producers and consumers, what is a ‘chapbook’, what sorts of titles best characterized the itinerant trade, and what they might say about their purchasers and readers, both economically and culturally. Other issues include the extent of the trade outside of London, concepts of ownership in particular titles, the role of women at the cheap end of the book trade, and the impact of cheap print on the cultural life of the country at large.