The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641-1649

The first weekly English newsbooks appeared in November 1641, on the eve of the civil war. Though they provoked animosity and fanned the flames of civil war, they have survived almost without interruption to the present day, transformed into the modern newspaper. The Invention of the Newspaper is the first detailed account of the origins and early development of the English newspaper, using a wealth of new evidence to show the causes of the first newsbooks, and their many and complex roles in the turbulent society in which they participated.Newsbooks were widely read and exerted considerable influence not only over immediate perceptions of news, but also over subsequent histories of the seventeenth-century, extending even to the present day. Using and synthesising approaches from literary criticism, history, and the 'socoiology of texts', The Invention of the Newspaper shows how newsbooks transformed print culture, fed the public hunger for news, and in turn created a market for news periodical. Charting the newsbook's development as a form and a commercial enterprise, its literary qualities, and its relationship to other means of communication, The Invention of the Newspaper shows the newsbook's gradual and irresistible dominance of the market for information.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: What News? 1: A Narrative History of the English Newsbook, 1641-1649 2: The Outbreak of the English Newsbook 3: Newsbooks, Style, and Political Rhetoric 4: Paper Bullets: Newsbooks, Pamphlets, and Print Culture 5: Newsbooks, their Distribution, and their Readers 6: The Crisis of Eloquence: Newsbooks and Historiography Appendix: 'Diurnall Occurrences' from Manuscript to Print

About the Author :
Born in Cardiff, Joad Raymond took his BA in English and History at UEA, then proceeded to the University of Oxford to do a D.Phil. Between 1993 and 1995 he held a reearch fellowship at Magdalen College before moving to a lectureship at the University of Aberdeen. He has been Senior Lecturer in English Literature, at UEA since 2000.

Review :
`Review from previous edition In this immensely stimulating and diverse work, Raymond succeeds in keeping the different components of theory and description in balance. From the point of view of newspaper history the work is a terrific achievement. Raymond's material provides an important and stimulating contribution to many of the debates about the way English society worked in the mid-seventeenth century.' Michael Harris, The Library, 19.4, December 1997 `Dr Raymond has carried out a diligent and ambitious examination of the earliest stages of the newsbook over a relatively short period ... Raymond has some interesting things to say about the readership and editors of the early newsbooks' Frances Henderson, Worcester College, Oxford, EHR June 1999 `Raymond has performed a public service by examining the transformation of the newsbook from 'a plain and non-controversial narrative of parliamentary proceedings into a bitter and aggressive instrument of literary and political faction.' We should, he urges, pay less attention to what contemporaries said about newsbooks and more to what they did with them. All seventeenth-century historians will benefit by reading this book.' Christopher Hill, Literature and History `richly researched and documented ... offers a keen analysis and broad samplings of one of the main discursive forms.' David Quint, Studies in English Literature `Raymond's book is a superb account of the history and function of the English newsbook; it examines every aspect of the writing, printing, publishing, distributing and reading of the news in the 1640's ... Erudite and engaged, Raymond looks deeply at the particulars of newsbooks in the 1640's and beyond them to a range of significant issues ... What emerges is a striking portrait of that busy and often chaotic traffic between and among authors, copyists, printers, vendors and readers of the news.' Steven N. Zwicker, Reviews of Books `In this immensely stimulating and diverse work, Raymond succeeds in keeping the different components of theory and description in balance. From the point of view of newspaper history the work is a terrific achievement. Raymond's material provides an important and stimulating contribution to many of the debates about the way English society worked in the mid-seventeenth century.' Michael Harris, The Library, 19.4, December 1997