reading and the book trade
reading and the book trade.The book trade in Shakespeare's England, sometimes mistakenly assumed to be a primitive cottage craft undertaken in open-air market stalls, was a thriving industry supported by a national infrastructure for distribution and marketing. Early London bookshops were substantial buildings, often four storeys tall, identified by the pictorial signs mentioned on title-page advertisements: ‘to be sold in Paul's Churchyard at the sign of the Green Dragon’. The centre of the London book trade was Paul's Cross Churchyard, in which more than 30 bookshops flourished, but bookshops could also be found throughout the city, especially along major thoroughfares and around focal points such as bridges, city gates, and public buildings.
Although the trade in printed plays was a relatively small part of the bookselling business, a contemporary observed that play quartos were printed in substantial numbers to satisfy the reading audience of...
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