Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulpmeister
Even in the early 19th century hard back books were very expensive. If you worked down the pit, or were a farm labourer, you couldn't afford a new one, or even a second hand one. Hence the arrival of public libraries in the UK and elsewhere. Mass production of books didn't really come until there was a very large population who were literate and production expanded accordingly, with machine binding and so on. And it really exploded with mechanical typesetting.
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Looking at Great Britian in the 1830's, penny bloods (later to become penny dreadfuls) were an example of mass marketed cheap fiction aimed at the working class. As for public libraries, in 1819 there were 28 booksellers who kept circulating libraries and 9 with reading rooms with Hatchards Booksellers founded in 1797 being one of the booksellers with a reading room and which is still in business. By 1821 there were around 66,000 reading societies in Great Britain with costs ranging from 1/2 to 2 guineas per year per family. These items courtesy of my wife and her near lifelong fascination with the Regency era. Never ever ask her about the newspaper tax courtesy of the Stamp Act of 1797.
I will admit that the penny bloods were not hardcover being printed on paper that was about the same quality as today's cheap paper towels. However while print runs of books in that era were much smaller than the average print run today, it's hard to argue that they were not mass-produced.