In this virtual book talk, Matthew P. Brown discusses his new book, The Novel and the Blank (2025), and explores the lively and often overlooked world of eighteenth-century print shops in British America. These workshops produced a kaleidoscope of printed materials—from novels and pamphlets, legal blanks and almanacs to runaway slave ads and chapbooks—which reflect the complexities of colonial life.
Brown paints a rich cultural history of the period, showing how certain popular texts—what he calls “steady sellers”—kept the printing trade going, while moments of religious revival and political unrest fueled bursts of new printing activity. He also examines how the business of printing was tied to both creative expression and systems of oppression like the slave trade.
With a sharp focus on everyday texts and readers, rather than the canonical works emphasized by modern scholars, Brown reveals a broader, more human picture of early American life. He shows how ordinary printed materials shaped big changes in religion, politics, and culture—and how those changes still shape our world.
Matthew P. Brown is an associate professor in the Center for the Book and the Department of English at the University of Iowa. His book, The Novel and the Blank, will be published in August, 2025. Brown was elected to AAS membership in April 2009