The Publication of Plays in London 1660-1800 ─ Playwrights, Publishers, and the Market

A great deal of bibliographic and historical scholarship has been devoted to English drama up to 1660, but after the renaissance scholarship grows scant: late seventeenth-century plays have received little such attention, and eighteenth-century plays hardly any. This ground-breaking study by two internationally renowned scholars in theater history asks fundamental questions that have often been previously ignored--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? 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 function of illustrations in published plays, and what can we learn from these illustrations?

This study, a significantly expanded version of the Panizzi Lectures delivered by the authors at the British Library in 2011, will become a vital work in the field, laying the groundwork for a generation of future scholarship.

Judith Milhous is Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor Emerita in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her publications include the two-volume co-authored historyItalian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Robert D. Hume is Evan Pugh Professor of English Literature at Penn State University. He is the author and editor of many works on English theater and opera, including, most recently,Plays, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings Associated with George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham.