In 2009 Patient H.M.'s brain is dissected live on the internet to a global audience of 400,000 people, cut into carefully preserved slices: manuscripts of tissue like the pages of a book. In 1953 Henry Molaison emerges from experimental brain surgery without any recollection of the last two years of his life or the ability to form new memories.

This lively new study covers the dramatic expansion of the press from the seventeenth century to the mid nineteenth century. Hannah Barker explores the factors behind the rise of newspapers to a major force helping to reflect and shape public opinion and altering the way in which politics operated at every level of English life. Newspapers, Politics and English Society 1695-1855 provides a unique insight into the political and social history of eighteenth and nineteenth century England as well as an important study of the history of the media.