Title

The Power of Print

Description

Print reshaped how people encountered faith, history, news, crime, politics, science and language. These books reveal print’s capacity to confer authority, promote official ideologies and mobilise readers across social ranks. State-sponsored works such as the Great Bible and historical compendiums like Holinshed’s Chronicles were officially approved visions of religious belief and English nationhood. Cheaper formats – plays, newsbooks and polemical pamphlets – brought contested ideas to broad audiences. At the same time, large-scale reference works, from herbals to dictionaries, used print to organise and publicise expanding bodies of knowledge.