Archaeologists excavate and historians delve; both have one thing in common in that they in the end rely on the printed word. If archaeologists and historians do not study the published accounts by their predecessors, how may they interpret the data gained from their delvings? And, if they in turn do not publish, how may their successors recognize their achievements? Nowadays, it is true, one may broadcast one's discoveries via television, wireless and video, but, even so, the printed word is still King. This is even more true for the Victorian on the Clapham omnibus, who relied on both reading and public lectures for his adult education and information. Thus archaeologists and historians circle the candle of the printed word, and haunt the shops of booksellers and offices of the printers in the hope that their manuscripts will be transformed into printed books and pamphlets bearing testimony to their labours.
This in turn should create interest in the health of the book trade, for the more vigorous it is, the wider the appreciation of the printed word, and the more frequent the opportunity of having one's writings on archaeological and historical subjects gracefully printed and efficiently published. Yet very little is known of the eighteenth and nineteenth English provincial book trade (the London book trade is better known) in spite of the importance of the printed word in the dissemination of knowledge. The outline of the eighteenth and nineteenth century provincial book trade is now slowly emerging from the fog of history. We have had the eye-opening 1983 British Library exhibition on the English provincial printer for the period 1700-1800, John Feather's The provincial book trade in eighteenth century England published in 1985, and now the British Book Trade Index (cut-off date: 1851) may be published next year. All quite encouraging, but what of Kent? What do we know of the book trade in Kent? For some time David Knott of Reading University has been preparing and publishing working papers on the early Kentish book trade: those for Canterbury (up to 1830) and for the Thanet area (up to 1840) have been published. It is expected that his next working paper will cover the Dover and Folkestone seaboard. I myself am compiling a directory of the book trade in Kent between 1840 and 1900, and hope to complete it in 1994, having now worked on it for the past five years or so. More than 2000 booksellers, stationers, printers and bookbinders are listed, including those apprenticed to the book trade. Papermakers and newsagents are not included in the directory, though journalists are, for many were with bookselling or printing backgrounds. Once both David Knott's and my researches are published it will be easier to produce statistics on the health of the Kentish book trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
It has been, though, known for some time that, while booksellers and printers could in towns be single-minded in their careers, those in more rural surroundings were often jacks-of-all-trades in order both to stay solvent and at the same time provide a welcome comprehensive service to rural communities. Quite a few were both chemists and booksellers, an echo of past times when stationers and booksellers also sold patent medicines and ointments. Richard Broomfield Stedman of West Malling between 1851 and 1899 was a chemist, bookseller, circulating library proprietor, insurance agent and postmaster. Stephen Waters of Horsmonden is listed in directories between 1854 and 1871 as a bookseller, grocer, draper, tailor, wine merchant, ironmonger, postmaster and china dealer. Booksellers and printers in towns could aspire to newspaper proprietorships.
Newspapers in a large way account for the high number of printers, both journeymen and apprentices, in Kent in the second half of the nineteenth century. Newspapers were labour-intensive, and the increase in the number of newspapers published in Kent corresponds with the rising number of printers from 1850. Another phenomenon of the second half of the nineteenth century is the increased use of the terms "assistant" and "manager". The coming of the railways in the mid-1840s in Kent heralded greater mobility and increased tourism. Shops and printing-offices grew larger; booksellers and printers perforce either had to be good managers or employ managers, who might have come from outside Kent. Take the career of Joseph Gick Livesey (1850- 1903), whose father was William Livesey, newspaper publisher of Preston in Lancashire: the first we hear of Joseph Gick Livesey in Maidstone is in 1877 when he married. The contemporary Post Office directories list him as a Maidstone printer, account book manufacturer and newspaper publisher. He was then in 1881 employed as a printer by a Stratford-on-Avon firm, and in 1882 by the Herald Press in Birmingham.
Between 1883 and 1886 Joseph Gick Livesey was the manager of a Wexford printing firm; in 1886 he moved to London to form a printing firm, Tunmer and Livesey, later Livesey and Eddington. Joseph Gick Livesey died in 1903 in Shrewsbury; The opportunities offered to printers and booksellers assistants by greater mobility and increased number of both "junior assistant" and newspaper-printing posts increased after 1850; Joseph Gick Livesey's career, considering these factors, is not unusual.
However, for us to give in rich detail the relationships in and working practices of the book trade in Kent in order to understand better the dissemination of the printed word in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seams of information on the Kentish book trade must be located and mined. In the last Newsletter there was an appeal to KAS members for information on their ancestors involved in the book trade in Kent. It cannot be that only one KAS member is connected with the Kentish book trade, surely not. As it is, A V. J. F. L. Gibbs, Esq., connected with the nineteenth century Canterbury printing firm of Gibbs and Sons, proved a rich seam, and I am grateful to him for his help. May I hope that other KAS members will come forward with what they know of the Kent book trade before 1900? R J. Goulden,
