Serial publication was the engine that drove the generalized expansion of print through London and the nation during the long eighteenth century. This chapter offers a short sequence of temporal snapshots within which some of the variables in the history of the newspaper during this long period can be indicated. The years chosen, 1720, 1775 and 1830, simply offer an evenly spaced sequence from which it is possible to take stock of the changes that crystallized around them. This is a supply-side view with the emphasis placed on the newspaper as a part of the output of the general trade in print. The year 1830 was pivotal in the history of the London newspapers. Change had begun, but the elements that linked the publications of 1720, 1775 and 1830 were probably stronger than the differences. In organisation, scale of production and character of content and readership, the main London newspapers stood in a recognizable evolutionary relationship to each other.

This chapter concerns changing patterns of serial publication, a term which covers two related practices: the publishing of periodicals with miscellaneous contents, including both magazines and newspapers, and the issuing of unified texts at intervals in independent fascicles or parts. Piecemeal publication blurred generic distinctions between news and fiction, but also between new print, revised print and reprint editions, and between serialisation, book, sequel and series. Publication of original novels in fascicles lost ground in the face of the new wave of literary miscellanies, whether monthly or weekly, which sold at lower prices once knowledge taxes were abolished and mechanical improvements cheapened book production and distribution. Primary developments in serialisation included both the expansion of the mass periodical and newspaper market and the segmentation of the market into diversely identified readerships. The chapter discusses the long-anticipated demise of the multi-volume first edition in the mid-1890s and the regulation of price discounting through the Net Book Agreement established in January 1900.