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At the end of the 16th century, Sweden had only one printing house, the Royal Printing House, but by about 1650 there were already 9 active printing houses in the entire kingdom (excluding the Baltic and German provinces).
By the mid-17th century, a total of 14 printing houses had been established, but many of them were short-lived. They all relied on commissions from the royal family, universities, or churches, but from the beginning they also produced and sold privately commissioned printed materials. While Turku and Lund had already gained prominence through their bishoprics, the new universities strengthened their position, and throughout the period studied these cities continued to be one of the main locations for publication, along with the political center Stockholm and the old university town of Uppsala. This was not the case in Tartu, which ceased to be Swedish in 1721, which is also reflected in the catalogue being studied.
Although Stockholm and university cities dominated this area, the gradual expansion of the publishing industry was also achieved through geographical expansion into new regions. Not surprisingly, this diversity is most evident in the catalogues of the Swedish National Library, with 125 publishing points in the nineteen-10s, while in the period under study publishing in the Finnish region was concentrated in less than 25 towns where books and other printed documents certainly did not remain where they were printed, whereas before the fourties of the seventeenth century they were naturally accessible to learned people. However, it is clear from the library catalogue that the mid-17th century was clearly a turning point in Swedish book culture. Books were printed in college towns, where groups of people contributed to the book industry—from authors to printers to readers. Unsurprisingly, from this period onwards, book production tended to grow.
In the catalogues of the National Library of Sweden and the National Library of Finland, published in 1650, there are 115 and 93 titles respectively. The corresponding numbers for 1800 are 845 and 236. The cumulative growth of titles illustrates how the landscape of print has changed over these 150 years. If one had access to all the printed material currently recorded in the catalogue, the number of books in the catalogue of the National Library of Sweden in 1828 would be 625 times that of 1650 and 214 times that of the National Library of Finland.
The overall growth in book printing is not surprising, but the exact numbers show a considerable difference in what it was like to be a learned person at the end of the survey period compared to the early days. The cumulative growth also shows that Turku is the most important printing center in the catalogue of the National Library of Finland, but in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, book printing in Turku did not develop as fast as Stockholm, Uppsala and Lund. In addition, as the comparison shows, the catalogue of the Swedish National Library does not include all papers from the 17th century: the actual level of printing in this period is higher than that indicated by the catalogue, since the papers still constitute a large part of the publications of this period. During the period covered by the survey, there was a complete shift in public discourse.
Observing this process only from the perspective of book printing can only show one aspect of print culture. For example, newspapers and books present different characteristics, especially in the eighteenth century. Gradually, they were produced and read in different ways and slowly detached from the oral practice of public communication, such as sermons and public speeches, which catalogues did not allow systematic comparisons of newspapers and other types of publications, mainly because information about newspapers was sporadic. However, the catalogue shows that book printing became more formal during this period. The increase in book production can be further linked to changes in reading culture during a given period. Changes in the number of pages published in different book formats suggest that larger, heavier folio and quadfolio books read at desks (often aloud) declined in importance, as the (most common) smaller and lighter pocket folio became most popular in the late 18th century.
This trend is particularly evident in the catalogues of the National Library of Sweden. The trend is less early and less pronounced in the FNB, where the proportion of academic titles is larger, reflecting the province's more conservative traditions. A similar trend is evident in the English catalogue of short titles, but further investigation is needed to show the extent to which octavo books have spread throughout Europe. It indicates a change in reading and publishing habits that coincided with the expansion of reading materials, the rise of literary culture, the further specialization of publishing, the emergence of leisure reading, and the introduction of market-driven printing presses, which Rolf Engelsin described as a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century.
He claims to read from intensive reading, meaning repeated reading of some central texts, meaning the desire to read many different texts for the purpose of personal learning and enjoyment, although gradual changes in book formats cannot be seen as directly corresponding to all shifts in reading and reading institutions (such as changes in society, libraries, or book markets). But the rise of smaller octal formats does support the idea that books are read more often when alone and distributed in easier ways.
Nevertheless, from a format point of view, Engelsing's combination of the French Revolution and the Reading Revolution seems far-fetched, since the change in format is more gradual and the development of the format is not related only to specific genres such as fiction or politics, as Engelsin emphasizes. Octal books include more or less the same genres as large volumes, but seem particularly suited to larger markets, increasingly adopting the eight-folio format. A sample from the period of freedom to print (1766–74) shows its prominence in the history of publication, speeches, hymns, and administrative records. The findings generally confirm Horst Ball's thesis about history in particular becoming the eight-open drive genre, but also suggest that this is not the whole story. It is clear that in this special period, the printing of administrative records in eight-open format also became prominent.
This appears to have been the result of the introduction of the principle of public access to documents in 1766, which made it possible to make money by printing and distributing official documents. The Bo Benech-Björkman document itself was key to sparking intense debate during this period and showed that the smaller octavon format was seen as particularly suited to titles that required rapid distribution, regardless of genre. Another way to analyze changes in the way books are created, marketed, and read is to look at the overall change in book titles. In his famous research, Franco Moretti analyzed the titles of 7,000 British novels written between 1740 and 1850 and noted that the average length of titles became significantly shorter over time. He argues that from long titles describing the content of the novel in surprising detail to shorter titles such as Woman's Name and Smuggler are associated with how books are marketed, commented on, and read.
In an age where public discourse includes dedicated book review sections, long, descriptive headlines don't make much sense: a better strategy is to use shorter, more cryptic headlines to grab the attention of potential readers. This study analysed more than 90,000 books and is therefore based on a much larger sample than the 7,000 novels studied by Moretti, although our analysis also considered publications other than books, such as pamphlets and government documents. Titles also encompass a wider variety of genres, from academic essays to political pamphlets to novels and publications by the state administration. However, both catalogues show a trend towards a decrease in average title length after the early 18th century, and to make this clearer, we include material from until 1900. Unsurprisingly, the National Library of Sweden's catalog trend is slightly steeper than the FNB and started earlier.
In SNB, the average title length of 25 to 35 words in the early 18th century gradually decreased to 5 to 10 words in the late 19th century. The trend towards FNB was more diffuse, but similar in nature between 1700 and 1900. The two catalogues show that the annual average in the early 18th century was higher than in the mid-17th century. Moretti's study did not cover this period and could not explain why this was the case. It seems that while short headings appeared throughout the period from 1640 to 1900 (e.g., the New Testament and the Catechism), there was a wider dispersion in title length in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
At the beginning of the 19th century, especially after 1850, the degree of dispersion was low, at which point shorter titles became the norm. One possible speculation is that a comparison between the two catalogues suggests that the specialization of print culture was not a general trend that swept through Europe and the Kingdom of Sweden in the 18th century, but rather an uneven process. Our research reveals that in current work, it is necessary to pay attention to the differences between different locations, languages, and formats. In our view, stories of growth and progress do not adequately describe the development of book production during the period under investigation. A bird's-eye view from the catalogue also shows how key events in the political history of Sweden and Finland influenced publishing activity.
While this is not surprising, zooming in on specific examples gives us a clearer picture of how this happened. Wartime experiences naturally influenced book printing. The wars that had the greatest impact on book production during this period included the Great Northern War to occupy Finland, the so-called "Great Fury", and the occupation after the Russo-Swedish War of 1808–09 (as part of the Napoleonic Wars), which followed by the occupation of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was formed within the Russian Empire in 1809, which effectively stifled local book production in Turku, which became apparent when Turku's book printing scale was compared to all publications of the SNB and FNB. The impact of the occupation was mainly local. On the Finnish side, they are most visible in Turku, the local center of book production.
The academy was closed during the Fury, and the library and printing facilities were transferred to Stockholm from autumn 1742 to 1743, less intensely and seemingly without seriously affecting printing conditions. The second half of the 18th century witnessed the growth of book production, which coincided with the period of economic and demographic growth and the period of intensification of intellectual life from the 70s of the 18th century to the 90s of the 18th century, in this sense, the Napoleonic Wars probably had a greater impact on Turku than people realized. In fact, the decline of academic life is often discussed in connection with the fires that caused the university to move to Helsinki and Turku, but it began much earlier. The fire and the loss of the university only prolonged the very slow recovery of Finland's largest city. From a national perspective, the revival of book production (slowly) took place in Helsinki and other places where imperial reforms were implemented.
The catalogue of the National Library of Sweden documents the decline in publications following the accession of Gustavus III in 1772 and the consequent restrictions introduced in the printing law adopted in 1774. Unsurprisingly, the special period of printing freedom (1766-1774) coincided with the peak of the number of books. Early research shows that this period was characterized by the massive distribution of pamphlets, especially in the political and economic spheres. Another source of growth is the large number of administrative documents issued under the new Public Access Act, which allows us to justify any changes in the preparation of manuals based on the amount of paper consumed in the documents, the number of pages and the information about the format in the published documents (as well as the page size estimates for each format). During this period, the average paper consumption per publication decreased, and when printing was restricted again, the consumption rose again. Comparing the eight years of the period of freedom of the press (1766–74) with the eight years preceding (1757–65) and the eight years that followed (1775–83) suggests that not only was there intense political and economic debate during the period of freedom of the press, but new laws also changed the way public debate was conducted. There are some regional differences in this trend.