Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1731-1814

This volume studies the Atlantic book trade of the eighteenth century and explores how publishing in the early Atlantic world was funded by consumers who had investments in slavery and related enterprises. It focuses on five of the earliest, and still surviving, pre-Revolutionary proprietary subscription libraries and examines how these libraries funded the purchase of imported British books.