A History of the Book in America

Volume 2

An Extensive Republic

Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790 - 1840

Edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley. The American Antiquarian Society and The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC. 2010 (this is a 9th printing). Hardcover in dust jacket. Black boards with gold lettering on spine. 697 pages. B&W illustrations.

While there were only a handful of contributors other than the editors in the first volume, there are dozens in this one. As literacy rates grew in the early 19th Century, the popularity of all types of printing increased dramatically. Novels, newspapers, almanacs and producers of political and religious pamphlets all demanded  a share of the nation's growing number of presses. And magazines, almost all which failed in the 18th Century, finally began to struggle into existence in the 19th.