I routinely tell my students that the overwhelming majority of British newspapers were originally launched for political reasons.

The founder-owner-editor wished to publicise his (just occasionally her) opinions about government (or the monarch) in the hope of effecting political or social change of some kind.

But until I read Bob Clarke's terrific romp through British newspaper history* I didn't realise that even in the middle of the 18th century there were papers being published with the express purpose of making money.

This was especially true, so it appears, of the non-metropolitan press publishers. In From Grub Street to Fleet Street, he illustrates the key importance the owners attached to attracting advertising.

Though they accepted that news was the main attraction, readers also appreciated the adverts. And profits could be made from a growing group of merchants seeking to sell their goods.

"Most provincial papers in the 18th century were politically neutral," writes Clarke. "They were intended for profit, not propaganda."

It therefore appears that I have been wrong in dating the beginnings of the rise of the commercial press to the 1850s. Its origins stretch back at least a century before that.

The true situation, as so often, was a little more complicated and a lot less linear. Despite their profit-making impetus, provincial papers did eventually adopt opposing political stances, not least to underscore their differences from rivals.

Their supposed "political neutrality" returned only after they had largely eradicated competing titles in the 20th century. However, papers that served the largest cities, such as the Leeds Mercury and the Manchester Guardian, were avowedly political in intent and content (while, it should be noted, making handsome profits).

These revelations (revelations to me, at least) are among the joys of reading Clarke's book, which has been reprinted, revised and extended since its original publication at an eye-popping £60.

Now, for £12.99 at most, you can trace the origins of the struggle for press freedom, the growing importance of advertising revenue, the beginning of war reporting, how editors mixed information with entertainment and the origins of campaigning journalism (good and bad).

But the real value is the way in which Clarke picks out a range of content that records Britain's social history alongside pen portraits of long-forgotten newspaper characters.

One fine example is Elizabeth Alkin, nicknamed "Parliament Joan", who was a Mercury Woman, a hawker of newsbooks - the earliest form of newspapers - on the streets of London during the Cromwellian era. She also wrote and produced her own newsbook while acting as a Cromwellian spy to expose covert royalist publishers.

Two quotes from the book illustrate its breadth. Both taken from the year 1762, they illustrate that papers then, as now, offered very different content.

The first is an advert placed in The Gazetteer, a populist title, by Sir John Fielding when offering a reward of five guineas for the capture of one Henrietta Reinholdt:

She is of Stature rather under the middle Size, a fair Complexion, very hoarse Voice, about 30 Years of Age, frequently dresses in Man's Cloaths, and has been used to all the Houses of ill Fame in London, where is is very well known by the Name of Kitty Hawley. She has also gone by the name of Davis, &c, and has lately been at York.

The other reminds us of the high-minded mission to free the press from state control. It's from the North Briton, a paper founded in 1762 by John Wilkes, and this is taken from its first issue:

The Liberty of the Press is the birthright of a Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of the country. It has been the terror of all bad Ministers; for their dark and dangerous designs, or their weakness, inability, and duplicity, have thus been detected.

Has anyone ever put it better?

* From Grub Street to Fleet Street: An illustrated history of English newspapers to 1899 by Bob Clarke (Revel Barker Publishing, £12.99) For more on the book, see the gentlemenranters site