本篇文章共分 4 段，從印刷革命產生的閱讀方式變化，到其與科技進步間的關係與美國在這場革命中所扮演的角色，分別說明廉價印刷革命在 19 世紀如何塑造一個與過往完全不同的資訊社會。

本篇考題英文原文與對應之中文翻譯整理如下。練習作答解題時若有對語意不清楚之處，請仔細查閱對照，以提升閱讀理解能力。

The Revolution of Cheap Print 廉價印刷品的革命

1. 印刷革命的發生

   The first half of the nineteenth century saw dramatic changes in the economics of the printed word in both the United States and Europe, though the changes generally happened earlier and on a wider basis in America. In the 1830s and 1840s, sharp reductions in prices for newspapers and books in America highlighted the advent of an era of cheap print. Now there were daily newspapers that instead of 6 cents per copy sold for a penny or two. Now there were novels that instead of an earlier price of $2 sold for 25 cents or less, when the same books in Britain cost the equivalent of more than $7. So steep were the declines in the price of print over so short a period that they amounted to an information-price revolution, the first of several such episodes of declining prices that have profoundly affected information and culture during the past two centuries. Two mid-nineteenth-century American cultural innovations, the “penny press” and the “dime novel,” were actually named for their low price. These were criticized for being cheap in both senses of that word low in price and low in taste. But low price did not necessarily mean lowbrow increasingly, book publishers issued even the most esteemed works in cheap as well as expensive editions to reach as wide a public as possible. The information-price revolution also affected religious and political publishing, as reading became a basis of mass persuasion for the first time in history.

   十九世紀上半葉，美國和歐洲的印刷品經濟都發生了巨大的變化，儘管這種變化在美國通常發生得更早，範圍更廣。19 世紀 30 年代和 40 年代，美國的報紙和書籍價格急劇下降，凸顯了一個廉價印刷時代的到來。現在有了只賣一兩分錢，而不是每份 6 美分的報紙，。現在有了售價為 25 美分或更低，而不是早先的 2 美元的小說，而同樣的書在英國的價格相當於 7 美元以上。在如此短的時間內，印刷品的價格下降如此之快，以至於它們相當於一場資訊價格革命，這是過去兩個世紀以來深刻影響資訊和文化的幾次價格下降事件中的第一次。十九世紀中期美國的兩項文化創新，即「一分錢報紙」和「一角錢小說」，實際上是因其價格低廉而得名。這些作品被批評為在價格和品味兩方面都很低劣。但低價漸漸地並不一定意味著趣味低劣，圖書出版商甚至以廉價和昂貴的版本發行最受尊敬的作品，以盡可能廣泛地接觸公眾。資訊價格革命也影響了宗教和政治出版，因為閱讀在歷史上第一次成為大眾信仰的基礎。

2. 閱讀習慣的改變

   Cheap print was not entirely unprecedented. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and France, cheap collections of stories, ballads, and other miscellany had circulated among the lower classes. But since only a minority of the poor could read, most listened while a few read aloud; thus, cheap print reached not so much a reading as a listening public. The expansion of cheap print in the nineteenth century in America and Europe was on a much larger scale, and it took place during a great increase in popular literacy. Together these amounted to a cultural watershed. Traditionally, even in literate homes, books and other publications had been relatively rare and treasured objects; reading meant returning to a few texts, especially religious works. But with the explosion of print, reading became more varied, and readers scanned newspapers, magazines, and cheap books that they soon passed on or discarded. Intensive reading of religious and other works did not disappear, but reading became an increasingly common form of diversion as well as devotion.

   廉價印刷品並非完全沒有先例。在十七和十八世紀的英國和法國，廉價的故事集、民謠和其他雜記在下層社會中流傳。但是，由於只有少數窮人能夠閱讀，大多數人都在聽，只有少數人大聲朗讀；因此，廉價印刷品接觸到的不是閱讀者，而是聽眾。十九世紀，廉價印刷品在美國和歐洲的擴張規模更大，而且是在大眾識字率大幅提高的情況下發生的。這些都構成了一個文化分水嶺。傳統上，即使在識字的家庭中，書籍和其他出版物也是相對罕見和珍貴的物品；閱讀意味著回到少數文本，特別是宗教作品。但隨著印刷品的爆炸性增長，閱讀變得更加多樣化，讀者掃瞄報紙、雜誌和廉價書籍，但他們很快就會轉手或丟棄。對宗教和其他作品的精讀並沒有消失，但閱讀也成為一種越來越普遍的消遣方式與愛好。

3. 印刷革命與科技

   The usual explanation for the rise of cheap print emphasizes new technology. Unquestionably, the full development of cheap print could not have happened without technological change. Print, however, had already become cheaper in America before technological advances played a significant role; new technology arrived once the process was under way, not at the beginning. This was no accident: the continuing expansion of print created an incentive for technological innovation. To conceive of technology as the causal force is to understate the prior importance of politics, culture, and markets in creating the conditions that allowed investments in new technology to pay off.

   對於廉價印刷品的興起，通常的解釋是強調新技術。毫無疑問，如果沒有技術變革，廉價印刷品的全面發展是不可能的。然而，在技術進步發揮重要作用之前，印刷品在美國已經變得更便宜了；新技術是在這個過程開始後才出現的，而不是在開始時。這並非偶然：印刷品的持續擴張為技術革新創造了動力。將技術視為因果關係，是低估了政治、文化和市場在創造條件使新技術的投資得到回報方面的重要性。

4. 印刷革命在美國

   Cheap print was public policy in America. While European governments taxed newspapers and other publications, the United States let them go tax free and even subsidized them, to a degree, through the postal system. The rise of cheap books and other forms of cheap print in the United States also reflected distinctive patterns of nineteenth-century American consumer markets. As the economic historian Nathan Rosenberg remarks, citing the cases of cutlery, guns, boots, and clothing, “Americans readily accepted products which had been deliberately designed for low cost, mass production methods” at a time when handmade goods persisted in Britain. Books fit this pattern. Americans had not been primarily responsible for introducing new manufacturing technology to the production of books. On the contrary, most of the key advances in printing and papermaking before 1850 had traveled west across the Atlantic rather than the reverse. But the industrialization of book production proceeded more rapidly in the United States, where the market by the middle decades of the century was not only larger than in Britain but also apparently more sensitive to price than to quality, perhaps because elite readers constituted a smaller proportion of book buyers.

   在美國，廉價印刷是一項公共政策。當歐洲政府對報紙和其他出版物徵稅時，美國卻讓它們免稅，甚至在某種程度上通過郵政系統對它們進行補貼。廉價書籍和其他形式的廉價印刷品在美國的興起也反映了 19 世紀美國消費市場的獨特模式。正如經濟史學家內森．羅森伯格在引用餐具、槍支、靴子和服裝的案例時所說，「美國人很容易接受那些為低成本、大規模生產方式而特意設計的產品」，而當時在英國，手工製作的商品仍為主流。書籍符合這種模式。美國人對在圖書生產中引入新的製造技術並非主要推手。相反的，在 1850 年之前，印刷和造紙業的大多數關鍵進展都是向西跨越大西洋而非相反方向。但圖書生產的工業化在美國進行得更快，到本世紀中葉，美國的市場不僅比英國大，而且顯然對價格比對品質更敏感，也許是因為精英讀者在圖書購買者中的比例較小。