Introduction
Keyword(s):
The introduction to this book argues that no general study of cheap print and popular literature has yet been undertaken for Scotland in the period between the advent of the nation’s first presses in the early sixteenth century and the eve of the French Revolution in the late eighteenth. It demonstrates that far more of this kind of ephemeral work aimed at a wide audience was once produced than has now survived and that the scale of its output has been insufficiently appreciated. The book sets out to show that Scotland both produced and imported a far more extensive range of reading matter for the mass market than has been acknowledged and that no understanding of contemporary society can be complete without it.