Introduction

Small and handy books to be carried in your pocket have long been an important aspect of book history and book studies, reaching as far back as the Middle Ages. However, in the form of ‘pocket books’—more commonly known as ‘paperbacks’—they are largely a product of modern industrialized societies. While the publishers and series that come most easily to mind were inaugurated in the twentieth century, research has also increasingly focused on their precursors in the nineteenth century. In fact, taking the four key aspects of paperbacks, the small format, industrial mass production, uniform serialization and low price as a point of reference, it was probably the German publisher Bernhard Tauchnitz with his English-language series, the Tauchnitz Edition in the early 1840s, who really initiated modern paperback publishing. In this context, the present publication sees its place contributing to a broader, international view of the phenomenon of early paperback series. The volume combines previously separate research trends in book and literary studies and offers a perspective on the emergence of paperback series as a social and media phenomenon of international dimensions that characterizes mass societies about to enter their modern phase, including not only Britain and Germany but also, for example, Finland and the Ottoman Empire.