Middle-class families in London and New York in 1830, with their comforting editions of the Times and the Morning Courier at hand, had little reason to contemplate the enormous changes that lay ahead. London had emerged from centuries of political and commercial activity in a dominant position, though provincial metropolises, including Manchester and Birmingham, were beginning to rival it as a result of considerable industrial changes under way in Britain. It continued, however, to be the largest city in the world, with a population of almost two million people. Its eight daily newspapers (four of them evening papers with small circulations), led by the Times and the Morning Chronicle, were the only ones of this type published in Britain; elsewhere, newspapers appeared weekly or, occasionally, two or three times a week. London was at the center of the nation’s publishing trade, which featured book distribution, as well as influential weekly magazines like the radical Examiner and the literary Athenaeum. Virtually all news, domestic and international, was filtered through its communications pipeline. It was the chief entrepot of print, although the majority of its publications were relatively high-priced and beyond the reach of ordinary people.