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3 - The Publication of Sermons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2014

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Summary

In the realm of eighteenth-century print, sermons were one of the most popular and accessible genres. Scholars have suggested that sermons accounted for as many as one in every fourteen titles, which meant that about two or three sermons a week came off the presses during the eighteenth century. The vast majority of single sermons were printed in a cheap, unbound, octavo format, which cost from 1d to 1s and would have been affordable for most people. Sermons by a wide range of preachers and on an almost unlimited selection of texts and subjects were available in print, such that a variety of guides to printed sermons were published for the aid of students, clergy and other avid sermon readers. Many booksellers put their names to at least one sermon during the course of their career, and sermons were profitable enough for some printers and booksellers to specialise in sermons, particularly those whose shops were located near St Paul's Cathedral, where religious bookselling dominated. Printed sermons were so prevalent that at times preachers felt that they were in competition with discourses in print, for some people seemed to prefer reading a selection of excellent published sermons to actually coming to church to hear a preacher. In 1722, William Berriman chastised such parishioners who thought they could excuse themselves from church by arguing that they were ‘reading better Sermons at home than they can hear at Church’.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2013

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