Beyond the Shop
The Lecture by JOHN HINKS (University of Leicester), On the margins of the book trade in early modern England was held at the University of Wolverhampton, on the 2nd of April 2008, at 12.00-12.30. The title of the CHORD WORKSHOP was: Beyond the Shop: Acquisition and Exchange Outside the Formal Market.
Abstract: The proposed paper will look at how books and other texts were distributed in ways that were separate from the mainstream book trade. The activities of chapmen, book pedlars and news-men, and their sources of supply, will be outlined. The various reasons for marginal or even secret distribution of texts will be considered, along with the relationship between the book trade ‘proper’ and people working on its fringes. The paper will then move on to a case study of two ‘underground’ pedlars of Catholic books and artefacts apprehended in Leicester in the early seventeenth century. One of them, Richard Crosland, is a particularly interesting case because the record of his interrogation in 1604, and the list that was made of his books and pictures, have survived in the Borough Records of Leicester – rare evidence for this kind of activity. A second case, Widow Stanley (1616), is also discussed. In addition to books and devotional items, she was carrying letters and messages which suggests that such pedlars formed part of a vital underground communication network for the beleaguered Catholic community of Jecobean England.
