Interlaced Frames

Seriality, Information, and Contact Zones in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Press and Printing Industry

Abstract

This contribution understands frames as tools of structuring information visually and aesthetically. Premodern flows of information and markets of news and intelligence were organized around multiple mechanisms in which the setting of frames and boundaries was a tool to sort and register knowledge. Building on archival material, this article connects printed issues of newspapers, discussions around advertising public sale, subscription, or censorship with the capacities of business or menu cards to enfold histories of expressing social interaction to highlight gate-keeping practices and to examine the communicative conditions of contact zones. I argue that enclosures of such kinds, put in frames and bound together by lines, edges, and borders, transferred premodern conditions of media into processes that shape the modern information society. Frames provided text with boundaries, helped packaging goods, and made news a serial commodity. Moreover, this started happening between 1770 and 1850 and had its ramifications in posting and collecting cards of all sorts in the late 19th century.