This collection of essays addresses issues in the history of the book, and considers aspects of the production, circulation, and consumption of printed texts. Using different methodological approaches, the essays examine market trends, modes of publication, and the use of pseudonyms by women writers.

1. Introduction: publishing history as hypertext John O. Jordan and Robert L. Patten; 2. Some trends in British book production 1800–1919 Simon Eliot; 3. Wordsworth in The Keepsake, 1829 Peter J. Manning; 4. Copyright and the publishing of Wordsworth 1850–1900 Stephen Gill; 5. Sam Weller's Valentine J. Hillis Miller; 6. Serialised retrospection in The Pickwick Papers Robert L. Patten; 7. Textual/sexual pleasure and serial publication Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund; 8. The disease of reading and Victorian periodicals Kelly J. Mays; 9. How historians study reader response; or, what did Jo think of Bleak House? Jonathan Rose; 10. Dickens in the visual market Gerard Curtis; 11. Male pseudonyms and female authority in Victorian England Catherine A. Judd; 12. A bibliographical approach to Victorian publishing Maura Ives; 13. The 'wicked Westminster', the Fortnightly, and Walter Pater's Renaissance Laurel Brake; 14. Serial fiction in Australian colonial newspapers Elizabeth Morrison; Index.