Seventeenth‐Century Print Culture

Abstract

Early modern cultural historians hang on to Habermas’ phrase ‘the public sphere’ against their better knowledge. This essay looks at the historiographical background to its reception and use, and proposes an alternative approach.

Communication in Colonial North America

“…Some notable examples include: Thomas Leonard's The Power of the Press , Charles Clark's The Public Prints (), Trish Loughran's The Republic in Print (), Peter Silver's Our Savage Neighbors (), Uriel Heyd's Reading Newspapers , Carol Sue Humphrey's The American Revolution and the Press (), Steven Smith's An Empire of Print , as well as articles by William Slauter (). The historiography on British, French, and later American print culture during the late colonial period is so vast and diverse that it has been the subject of several History Compass articles and cannot possibly be included in full detail here (Raymond, ; Peacey, ; Nerone, ). This separate field of inquiry evinces an even further fragmentation in the history of colonial communication, one based not simply on the peoples and places studied but also on the types of sources required or produced in information exchange.…”