Branding or Excluding? : The Tenability of the ‘Branding’ Concept in the History of Nineteenth-Century Dutch Book Publishing, Book Printing, and Bookselling

Abstract

Various aspects of branding can be recognized in the Dutch nineteenthcentury literary book trade, even though for a long time publishers and booksellers shied away from the explicit commercialization of what was considered to be merchandize of superior cultural value. A search for examples of branding reveals that branding studies seem to lack their own heuristic methodology: what can be described as branding is often a relabelling of the findings of ‘old school’ literary studies. Moreover, the history of important nineteenth-century printing houses has yet to be written. Research into branding strategies therefore might be somewhat premature, although the branding concept might be useful for book historians in describing the relations between publisher (printer), author, and reader.