The broad contours of this narrative, and the identity of the individuals implicated in it, will be familiar to those students of 18th-century literature who have read J.A. Downie’s canonical Robert Harley and the Press (1979). But what Hone adds to Downie’s account is a bibliographer’s feel for 18th-century books and manuscripts —his expert knowledge of how books were made and brought into being is worn very lightly — as well as an eye for detail and sense of narrative drive worthy of a fiction writer.
