Publishers, Profits and Poverty

Fleet Street in the 19th century was not just home to daily and weekly newspapers, but more importantly radical publishers who campaigned for political reform, a free press and the repeal of newspaper taxes; and a growing market in cheap and sensational literature—penny bloods, story papers and popular magazines and books aimed at the masses. This was Bohemian Fleet Street, which took place not just on Fleet Street itself, along with its courts and alleyways, but also neighbouring thoroughfares such as the Strand, Holywell Street and Paternoster Row. This book charts the lives and careers of around 100 of these publishers. It highlights the wealth of those who grew rich with the poverty of those who struggled. It also reveals new biographical information, filling in gaps and correcting mistakes in previously-published biographies and directory entries, and also about those whose lives have been hitherto unrecorded, but who played an integral part in the development of cheap, accessible and popular literature.