The early 19th century struggles first for a free, and then for a cheap press were fought out in classically liberal ideological terms, and by typically nineteenth century organisations, based on the model of the Anti-Corn Law League. Originally published in 1976, this book begins by showing how these struggles culminated in the emergence of a cheap daily press in the 1860s. The book shows how this development was also dependent on technical, economic and commercial changes, which gradually transformed the press from predominantly small-scale craft production to large-scale industrial production for a large and increasingly homogenous. market.

The book discusses the ways in which these industrial developments came increasingly to hamper the attainment of the earlier classical liberal vision of the cheap press. The rise and fall of the provincial penny daily, the growing emphasis upon profits, the increasing professionalisation of journalism, and the style and content of the 'new journalism' were all indicative of the impact of economic growth upon that liberal vision. Nowhere were these changes felt more than in politics and the changing relationship between the press and politics, and politicians and the electorate forms the last part of the book.