Abstract
The significance of print capitalism and the consumption of Oriental goods in terms of informing British representations of the Orient are best illustrated by two well-reputed eighteenth-century British authors of Oriental tales, Oliver Goldsmith and Joseph Addison, in the following passages:
It is usual for booksellers here, when a book has given universal pleasure upon one subject, to bring on several in the same manner upon the same plan; which are sure to have purchasers, and readers from that desire which all men have to view, apleasing object on every side.1 (Lien-Chi Altangi in Citizen of the World)
At the End of the Folio’s (which were finely bound and gilt) were great jars of China placed one above another in a very noble piece of Architecture. The Quarto’s were separated from the Octavo’s by a pile of smaller vessels which rose in a delightful pyramid. The Octavo’s which were bound by Tea Dishes of all shapes, colours and sizes, which were so disposed on a wooden frame, that they looked like one continued Pillar indented the finest sculpture, and stained with the greatest variety of Dyes.2 (The character, the Spectator in The Spectator)
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Notes
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© 2012 Ashok Malhotra
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Malhotra, A. (2012). Encountering the Orient and India in Metropolitan Culture and the Print Market. In: Making British Indian Fictions. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011541_2
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