"London as a centre for business and culture provided the essential focus for the development of the English book trade. In physically constricted urban spaces, printing, bookselling and all the associated activities were organized in intricate topographical patterns. How this worked on the ground provides the central theme of this volume, containing original essays by specialists in a variety of related fields. Several chapters explore the communities of printers and booksellers around St. Paul's Cathedral and its neighbourhood in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Other topics range across the areas of London associated with the print trade, and with French emigres in the book trade, to the output of private presses in the London suburbs in the nineteenth century."--BOOK JACKET.