ABSTRACT
In the City Archives of the English south-coast port of Southampton are a few fragmentary records of what was once a thriving nineteenth-century printing trade. Most pertinent for our purposes are a series of 'Day Books' containing binding orders for large parts of the period 1858-1921. In 1861 there were 30 bindings of volumes of AYR, and it is significant that 22 of them take place between January and August, the period of Great Expectations's run. Three genres heavily dominate the lists of non-stationary items, particularly in the earlier period: religious books, periodicals and the works of Charles Dickens. Two of the most frequent entries in the five-year period beginning in 1858, apart from the binding of religious periodicals, are for the binding of volumes of HW and, beginning on 30 September 1859, AYR. A Tale of Two Cities apparently failed to win Southampton's favour in serial form. In 1860 there were 5 bindings of HW and 18 of AYR.
