ABSTRACT
Patrons, booksellers, Grub Street, censors, press spies and the like-all tend to be most familiar to people through literary treatment. The truth is that literary historians have taken the writer's word for too much. No one would deny that there were far-reaching and often injurious effects on the man of letters as a result of the decline in patronage which took place within this period, with the consequent shift to a market situation and the hegemony of London booksellers. It so happened that London booksellers as they grew in substance tended to take on aldermanic roles. The account offered by A. S. Collins of the decline in aristocratic patronage turns out, on a closer look, to be no explanation at all: That kind of patronage only flourishes when learning is confined to comparatively few, and those few are able to find in the people of wealth and rank, themselves a small circle, some to support and appreciate that learning.
