ABSTRACT
Printing is the technological foundation of the publishing industry. Despite the existence of a trade in books in western Europe before the invention of the craft, the development of a mass market industry was possible only when there was a technology of mass production. Pre-industrial printing was a hand-craft process. This began to change in the early nineteenth century with improvements to existing machinery and equipment followed by the development of new devices which effectively mechanised printing. Much later in the century there were similar changes in typesetting and ultimately bookbinding (see above, pp. 85-93). Since the early seventeenth century in England, publishers (or ‘booksellers’ in earlier parlance) had been clients and customers of printers rather than printers themselves. Printing evolved as a distinct industry, and for most of those engaged in it book printing was only a small part of their businesses if it featured at all. Across the industry as a whole, jobbing printing and magazine and newspaper work were of far greater economic importance. Indeed, by the end of the nineteenth century, book printing was regarded as a specialised branch of the trade in which comparatively few firms were engaged (see above, pp. 92-3). By the mid-twentieth century, these distinctions were clearly understood and were indeed considered to be appropriate to the industry (Delafons 1965: 59-67). Publishers and book printers are interdependent, but only coincidentally connected to the other branches of the printing industry.
