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AbstractFor much of the 18th century, letter writing remained an important means of communicating news about proceedings at Westminster. Members of leading parliamentary families such as the Hardwickes were prolific letter writers and their correspondence has long been valued as a source for the period before the regular reporting of debates became established in the newspaper press. This article focuses on reporting by letter in the correspondence of the 2nd earl of Hardwicke and his circle. It reconstructs Hardwicke's network of informants and considers how the nature of their connection with the earl affected the way they conceived of their role as reporters. With reference to the epistolary conventions of the time, it asks how the circumstances in which letters were composed and read may have shaped the style and content of the reports. Finally, the article examines the impact made on the epistolary tradition by the emergence of newspaper reporting in the later 18th century and assesses the extent to which this development led letter writers to adjust their methods and goals.

This study offers an authoritative and readable account of the hidden history of book theft in eighteenth-century London. It exploits a rich primary source, the compelling narratives of crime contained in the digitised Proceedings of the Old Bailey. The authors explain how cases of book theft came to court, and how in the ensuing trials the nature of the book itself became a question for legal debate. They assess the motives which led Londoners to steal books and the methods they employed in thefts from households and booksellers. Finally, the authors ask what the Proceedings tells us about the social ownership of books, and how the phenomenon of book theft differently affected book producers and consumers. Stealing Books in Eighteenth-Century London will appeal to readers interested in the connected histories of metropolitan life, crime, and the book in this period, and in the uses of digital resources in humanities research. Dr Richard Coulton is a lecturer in English Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World (2015, with Markman Ellis and Matthew Mauger), as well as the editor of Tea in Natural History and Medical Writing (2010). Dr Coulton has published journal articles on sociability, natural history, and horticulture in eighteenth-century London. He was previously a Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington D.C.), an institute of Harvard University. Dr Matthew Mauger is a lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. He researches literature of the long-eighteenth century, focusing in particular on how Enlightenment legal debate forms an important context for artistic production in the period. Another aspect of Matthew's research focuses on legal and commercial innovation, mercantile life, and the history of the civic institutions of the City of London. He has published articles on Blake's legislative architecture, the literature of penal transportation, and the Corporation of London courts. He was the editor of Tea, Commerce and the East India Company (2010), and an author of Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World (2015). Christopher Reid works on eighteenth-century literature and history, with a focus on political writing and oratory in that period. His first book, Edmund Burke and the Practice of Political Writing (1985), examined Burke's rhetoric in the context of contemporary political controversy. In Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (2000), which he edited with John Mullan, he examined cultural interactions between the elite and popular spheres. His most recent book is Imprison'd Wranglers: The Rhetorical Culture of the House of Commons 1760-1800 (2012), which looks at speakers, speeches, and their dissemination through print in parliamentary oratory's golden age.