- Title Pages
- A Note on Money
- 1 W. & R. Chambers and the Market for Print
- I Organizing a Proper System of Publishing
- 2 Industrial Book Production
- 3 Reaching a National Market
- 4 Production and Steam Power
- 5 New Formats for Information
- 6 Reaching an Overseas Market
- 7 A Modern Printing Establishment
- II Railways and Competition
- 8 The Coming of the Railways
- 9 Centralizing Business in Edinburgh
- 10 Routledge and the New Competition
- 11 Railway Bookstalls
- 12 Instruction in the Railway Marketplace
- 13 The Dignitaries of the Trade Take on Routledge
- III Steamships and Transatlantic Business
- 14 Transatlantic Opportunities
- 15 Getting to Know the American Market
- 16 The Dissemination of Cheap Instruction
- 17 A New Spirit of Engagement
- 18 Building Relationships with Boston and Philadelphia
- 19 Piracy and Shipwreck!
William Chambers died after several months of physical frailty and failing memory. He was “the poor lad by honest industry rising to eminence,” who had risen “from poverty to opulence, and from obscurity to the highest service and honour which his city could bestow.” Chambers' ultimate success and wealth showed the possible mass market for print, for those who understood how best to supply it. After his death, his memorialist remarked that had William been apprenticed to a grocer instead of a bookseller, he would no doubt have “have risen to the first rank of merchants.” He utilized stereotype plates for Chambers's Journal. These plates lost their role in coordinating the Journal's two British editions when Chambers decided to break their long-standing agreement with William Orr. W. & R. Chambers were moderately successful in their American business dealings, but it was a hard-won and carefully managed success.
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