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Revolutions from Grub Street

248 views · Published 21 January 2015 · 3:55 · Indexed 29 October 2026

Channel: Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press) · 2015 · Education

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Howard Cox introduces Revolutions from Grub Street 
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Revolutions from Grub Street charts the evolution of Britain's popular magazine industry from its seventeenth century origins through to the modern digital age. Following the reforms engendered by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the Grub Street area of London, which later transmuted into the cluster of venerable publishing houses centred on Fleet Street, spawned a vibrant culture of commercial writers and small-scale printing houses. Exploiting the commercial potential offered by improvements to the system of letterpress printing, and allied to a growing demand for popular forms of reading matter, during the course of the eighteenth century one of Britain's pioneering cultural industries began to take meaningful shape. Publishers of penny weeklies and sixpenny monthlies sought to capitalise on the opportunities that magazines, combining lively text with appealing illustrations, offered for the turning of a profit. The technological revolutions of the nineteenth century facilitated the emergence of a host of small and medium-sized printer-publishers whose magazine titles found a willing and growing audience ranging from Britain's semi-literate working classes through to its fashion-conscious ladies.

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