The Publication of Plays in London 1660 - 1800

A great deal of bibliographical and historical scholarship has been devoted to English drama up to 1660, but late seventeenth-century plays have received little such attention and eighteenth-century plays hardly any at all. This ground-breaking study by two internationally renowned scholars in theatre history addresses such fundamental questions as: who published plays? What was the cost of publication, the risk, and the potential profit? What did single plays cost, and what did play collections cost? What was the buying power of those prices, and who could afford to make such purchases? How much market existed for used copies and at what prices? What did playwrights earn from publication, and how important was it to their income? What was the commercial logic of various sorts of collections? What was the function of illustrations in published plays, and what can we learn from such illustrations? This study, a significantly expanded version of the Panizzi Lectures delivered by the authors at the British Library in 2011, will become a cornerstone work in the field and lays the groundwork for a generation of further scholarship.