Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture

Jonathan M. Yeager

The first detailed history of Jonathan Edwards's publications during the eighteenth century
Offers new insight on several key figures involved in the printing, publishing, and editing of Edwards's books, as well as extensive details on their cost and marketing

Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture

Jonathan M. Yeager

Description

On March 20, 1760, a fire broke out in the Cornhill district of Boston, destroying nearly 350 buildings in its wake. One of the ruined shops belonged to the eminent Boston bookseller Daniel Henchman, who had published some of Jonathan Edwards's most important works, including The Life of Brainerd in 1749. Less than one year after the Great Fire of 1760, Henchman died. Edwards's chief printer Samuel Kneeland and literary agent and editor, Thomas Foxcroft, had also passed away by the end of the decade, marking the end of an era. Throughout Edwards's lifetime, and in the years after his death in 1758, most of the first editions of his books had been published in Boston. But with the deaths of Henchman, Kneeland, and Foxcroft, the publications of Edwards's writings shifted to Britain, where a new crop of booksellers, printers, and editors took on the task of issuing posthumous editions and reprints of his books.

In Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture, religious historian Jonathan Yeager tells the story of how Edwards's works were published, including the people who were involved in their publication and their motivations. This book explores what the printing, publishing, and editing of Jonathan Edwards's publications can tell us about religious print culture in the eighteenth century, how the way that his books were put together shaped society's understanding of him as an author, and how details such as the formats, costs, quality of paper, length, bindings, and the number of reprints and abridgements of his works affected their reception.

Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture

Jonathan M. Yeager

Acknowledgments

Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction on the Reception of Jonathan Edwards's Works in the Eighteenth Century
Chapter 2: Samuel Kneeland and Colonial Boston Printing
Chapter 3: Jonathan Edwards's Earliest Bookseller-Publishers and Their Relationships with Printers
Chapter 4: Jonathan Edwards's Editors and Their Relationships with Booksellers and Printers
Chapter 5: Jonathan Edwards's Later Printers, Publishers and Editors
Conclusion

Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Notes
Index

Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture

Jonathan M. Yeager

Author Information

Jonathan Yeager is UC Foundation Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture

Jonathan M. Yeager

Reviews and Awards

"Yeager uncovers many heretofore overlooked treasures." -- David Komline, Journal of Religion

"this work demonstrates the positive contribution that social history and print culture studies provide to the construction of evangelical history" -- Joseph T. Cochran , Themelios

"While scholars of the history of the book will find fascinating Yeager's untangling of the complex of factors shaping the book trade in this period, American religious historians will appreciate not only his discussion of evangelicalism's role in this enterprise but also his novel perspective on the well-known writings of Jonathan Edwards."--Ava Chamberlain, Church History

"Yeager's Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture is a well-researched volume telling a detailed, instructive story about the multifaceted efforts put into publishing Jonathan Edwards's works and the important people who made that happen. This monograph makes a valuable contribution to the fields of Jonathan Edwards, colonial America, the Atlantic world, and the history of the book."--David P. Barshinger, Fides et Historia

"Jonathan Yeager's Jonathan Edwards and Transatlantic Print Culture joins Melanie Bigold's Women of Letters, Manuscript Circulation and Print Afterlives in the Eighteenth Century (2013) and Tessa Whitehouse's The Textual Culture of English Protestant Dissent CHDB-CIBB (2015) as groundbreaking monographs uncovering the history of early evangelical writing and publishing in Great Britain, America, and the Netherlands, a history generally ignored or marginalized in studies of print culture of this period."--Timothy Whelan, The Library

"The result of careful scholarship, this study of the business and practice of publishing Edwards's sermons and essays opens a portal on the fascinating infrastructure of the emergent intellectual culture of the colonies, which entailed navigating relationships, varieties of currency, shortages of paper, and war Highly recommended"--CHOICE

"Yeager mines the archive to shine new light on this New Light."--SHARP

"Yeager unpacks a compelling narrative and advances an important thesis...Yeager also helpfully underscores the transatlantic dimension of evangelical publishing networks and its role in shaping the public identity of figures like Edwards This book is a much-needed resource, and students and scholars of religious history and print culture will benefit greatly from it."--Jonathan Edwards Center Germany

"This is an outstanding monograph, the best so far this year to treat the mundane realities that shaped Edwards' life and historical significance."--Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"An admirably comprehensive study that sheds light on both Jonathan Edwards and the history of transatlantic publishing. Yeager's insightful book reveals Edwards's deep debts to the printers and booksellers who marketed his works." --Catherine Brekus, Harvard Divinity School

"Jonathan Yeager shows us Jonathan Edwards in a new light, the illuminating consequences of his meticulous history of how Edwards appeared 'in print' in the eighteenth century. A major contribution to our understanding of the book trades in early America, and of Edwards himself." --David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History, Harvard Divinity School

"Building on preliminary work on Edwards's reception in the intellectual worlds of early modern Europe and America, and on studies of the various editions of his works, Yeager is the first to explore, in a systematic way, the intersection of Edwards's writings and print culture, his publishers, printers, and editors through the eighteenth century. Joining a material culture approach with the history of the book, we have here an entirely new perspective on Edwards as an early evangelical writer and spokesperson." --Kenneth P. Minkema, Executive Editor & Director, Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University