A Statistical Survey and Evaluation of the Eighteenth-Century Short- Title Catalog

Since it was first made available to the public in 1982, the Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalog has revolutionized the access to bibliographical information for eighteenth-century Great Britain and North America. Conceived as an extension of the printed short-title catalogs that covered the previous period of the hand-press era, the ESTC is the first electronic catalog to provide a chronologically continuous picture of publishing for a whole century. In the past sixteen years, the catalog found many applications in a wide range of disciplines, yet, little use of it was made for global statistics on the book trade. The ESTC answers many of the objections raised against global surveys, and allows for literary problems to be seen from the perspective of a long-term history. The expansion of the ESTC into the EnglishSTC, further enhances the value of the ESTC by providing the larger context in which the significance of eighteenth-century trends can be fully appreciated. Global statistics obtained from the EnglishSTC demonstrate the impressive, exponential expansion in the number of published titles over three centuries. These statistics suggest that early nineteenth-century technological innovations happened as a direct result of the expansion of the publishing industry. Could the hand-press also be responsible for the emergence of different literary sensibilities? A second series of statistics obtained on the basis of a representative sample of the ESTC allows us to approach in greater detail the question of the qualitative, internal changes that affected the book trade. Romanticism must be related in part to the fast growing popularity of the printed word. In the conclusion, I try to formulate a set of questions specific to a long-term history of literature. As the publishing world changed, so did the methods and goals of writing, whether "academic" or commercial. Together with the expansion of literacy and the ever greater and faster dissemination of the printed word, our views of "letters," of literacy and of writing, have radically changed. Statistics on eighteenth-century publishing also lead to a better appreciation of the changing status of letters in our own times.