ABSTRACT
At the turn of the seventeenth century, the printing industry, which had played such a decisive part in broadcasting the ideas of the reformation, was developing so quickly that the political and religious authorities were trying to bring it under control, either for economic or for moral reasons. The printing industry and the book trade were also developing in the provinces. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were fifty-five ‘publishers’ in the provinces; whether they had the same status as the London booksellers. The development of the publishing trade in the provinces was encouraged by at least two factors. The first was the construction, often by French Huguenots, of paper mills; there were 100 of them in 1696. The second factor which encouraged the growth of publishing in the provinces was the decision taken in 1695 to drop the restrictions imposed by the law of 1615 on the number of printers.
