English Books and Readers 3 Volume Set Author:H. S. Bennett This classic work, first published in 1952, covers in detail the history of books from Caxton down to the incorporation of the Stationers' Company, discussing the evidence for public literacy, the regulation of the book trade, the demand for books, the authors, translators, and printers of early books, and their methods. It is a history of socie... more »ty at the opening of the Art of Printing, without which civilization as we know it could hardly have taken shape at all - a chapter in the human story, unique in its significance and remarkably obscure before this book was first published. In the second volume of his classic English Books and Readers, first published in 1965, H. S. Bennett continues the story down to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. His purpose is to give an account of the total output of books and pamphlets in this period, irrespective of their qualities as literature. He reveals a picture of astonishing variety and fertility. The part of it which concerns the production of imaginative, philosophical and religious books is fairly well known; but by far the larger proportion of the output of the printing presses consisted of such diverse products as histories and geographies, moral treatises, translations from the Classics, legal and medical text-books, writings on sports and pastimes, seamanship, primers of instruction in languages and music, the great and famous corpus of travel books, volumes of ballads and verses, and cheap and sensational pamphlets on such topics as monstrous births, strange creatures, the evil practices of witches and the diabolical objectives of traitors. Besides showing how the printers, booksellers and their allies made this enormously diverse mass of material readily available to the Elizabethan reading public, the author examines as well the relations between writers and readers. The third volume of English Books and Readers, first published in 1970, carries the story of the English book trade down to the eve of the Civil War. The author gives an account of the total output of books and pamphlets in the period, irrespective of their qualities as literature.« less