Cultural Crossroads: Print and Reading in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century English-Speaking Montreal.

From the establishment of its first press in 1776 when Fleury Mesplet arrived with a printer's commission from the Continental Congress, Montreal has been a dynamic center of cultural exchange and printing activity, a crossroads linking France, British North America, and the United States. Drawing upon two scholarly traditions and their respective approaches to book history--analytical bibliography theorized by Anglo-American researchers and the analysis of quantitative and documentary evidence developed by their French colleagues--the general editors of a 'History of the Book in Canada/Histoire du livre et de l'imprimé au Canada' demonstrate the use of material and cultural evidence for the study of printers and readers in early Canada.