Literary Production and Reception

Nineteenth-century industrialization often conjures up images of grimy cities, factories full of toiling machinery, or the engineering of ships, bridges and railways. Yet the steam power utilized by the railways and cotton mills played an equally important role in the development of the publishing industry: new steam printing presses produced books, magazines and newspapers in unprecedented numbers (the first edition of The Times to be printed on a steam press appeared in November 1814). The railways that carried people all over the country also transported books and newspapers, distributing an unprecedented volume and variety of reading matter. Publishing and printing were major beneficiaries of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization helped to make cheap print media possible. Between 1840 and 1870, the British population rose by 40 per cent, yet the number of books published annually rose by about 400 per cent.1