Part 1

Transcriber’s Note: Purely decorative illustrations have been removed from the plain text version; the remaining illustrations have been moved, where necessary, to the nearest paragraph break in the text.

THE

OXFORD

University Press

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE OXFORD University Press 1468-1921

_OXFORD_ AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M CM XXII

Oxford University Press

_London_ _Edinburgh_ _Glasgow_ _Copenhagen_ _New York_ _Toronto_ _Melbourne_ _Cape Town_ _Bombay_ _Calcutta_ _Madras_ _Shanghai_

Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY

_~The author~ desires to express his grateful thanks to all those members of the Staffs of the Press and its Branches who have helped him in the compilation of this sketch, or have contributed to its typographical or pictorial embellishment; and especially to ~Mr. FALCONER MADAN~, from whose ~Brief Account of the University Press at Oxford (1908)~ the historical details here mentioned are derived._

OXFORD, _December 1921_.

CONTENTS

I. HISTORICAL SKETCH 9

II. THE PRESS TO-DAY

The Press at Oxford 23

The Press in the War 33

Wolvercote Paper Mill 36

The Press in London 38

Administration 40

Finance 42

Oxford Imprints 45

Catalogues and Advertisement 49

The Press and its Authors 54

Bibles and Prayer Books 58

Clarendon Press Books 61

III. THE PRESS ABROAD

India 63

Canada 67

Australasia 68

South Africa 69

China 69

Scandinavia 69

The United States 70

IV. OXFORD BOOKS

Oxford Series 73

Oxford Books on the Empire 81

The Oxford Standard 83

Illustrated Books 90

Official Publications 92

The Oxford English Dictionary 95

The Dictionary of National Biography 103

The Oxford Medical Publications 106

Oxford Books for Boys and Girls 109

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 110

I

HISTORICAL SKETCH

The first book printed at Oxford is the very rare Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed attributed to St. Jerome, the colophon of which is dated 17 December, Anno domini Mcccclxviij. It is improbable that a book was printed at Oxford so early as 1468; and the bibliographers are on various grounds agreed that an x has been omitted. If so, Oxford must be content to date the beginning of its Press from the year 1478; while Westminster, its only English precursor, produced its first book from Caxton’s press in 1477.

The first printer was Theodoric Rood, who came to England from Cologne, and looked after the Press until about 1485; soon after which date the first Press came to an end. The second Press lasted from 1517 until 1520, and was near Merton College. Some twenty-three books are known to have issued from these Presses; they are for the most part classical or theological works in Latin. There is no doubt that this early Press was really the University Press; for many of the books have the imprint _in Alma Universitate Oxoniae_ or the like, some bear the University Arms, and some are issued with the express privilege of the Chancellor of the University.

After 1520 there is a gap in the history, which begins again in 1585. The Chancellor of that time was Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, the Earl of Leicester, who in the first issue of the new Press is celebrated as its founder. Convocation in 1584 had appointed a committee _De Libris imprimendis_, and in 1586 the University lent £100 to an Oxford bookseller, Joseph Barnes, to carry on a press. In the next year an ordinance of the Star Chamber allowed one press at Oxford, and one apprentice in addition to the master printer. Barnes managed the Press until 1617, and printed many books now prized by collectors, among them the first book printed at Oxford in Greek (the Chrysostom of 1586), the first book with Hebrew type (1596), Richard de Bury’s _Philobiblon_, and Captain John Smith’s _Map of Virginia_.

FOUR FOUNDERS OF THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

The first notable promoter of the Oxford Press was Archbishop Laud, whose statutes contemplate the appointment of an _Architypographus_, and who secured for the University in 1632 Letters Patent authorizing three printers (each with two presses and two apprentices), and in 1636 a Royal Charter entitling the University to print ‘all manner of books’. The privilege of printing the Bible was not exercised at this date; but in 1636 Almanacks were produced, and this seems to have alarmed the Stationers’ Company, who then enjoyed a virtual monopoly of Bibles, Grammars, and Almanacks; for we find that in 1637 the University surrendered the privilege to the Stationers for an annual payment of £200, twice the amount of Joseph Barnes’s working capital. The most famous books belonging to what may be called the Laudian period were five editions of Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and one of Bacon’s _Advancement of Learning_ in English.

The work of the Press during the Civil War is of interest to historians and bibliographers on account of the great number of Royalist Pamphlets and Proclamations issued while the Court of Charles I was at Oxford; a number swollen in appearance by those printed in London with counterfeit Oxford imprints. But this period is not important in the history of the Learned Press; and after 1649 it suffered a partial eclipse which did not pass until the Restoration.

The history of the Press in the latter part of the seventeenth century will always be connected with the name of the second of its great patrons, Dr. John Fell, Dean of Christ Church and Bishop of Oxford. Fell made the great collection of type-punches and matrices from which the beautiful types known by his name are still cast at Oxford; he promoted the setting up of a paper mill at Wolvercote, where Oxford paper is still made; he conducted the long, and ultimately successful, struggle with the Stationers and the King’s Printers, from which the history of Oxford Bibles and Prayer Books begins (1675). In 1671 he and three others took over the management of the Press, paying the University £200 a year and spending themselves a large sum upon its development. Lastly, it seems that he suggested to Archbishop Sheldon the provision, due to his munificence, of the new and spacious printing house and _Theatre_ which still bears his name. The Press was installed there in 1669, and began to issue the long series of books which bear the imprint _Oxoniae e Theatro Sheldoniano_, or in the vulgar tongue _Oxford at the Theater_. These imprints, indeed, were still used, at times, long after the Press had been moved from the Sheldonian to its next home in the Clarendon Building. Many learned folios were printed at this time, including pioneer work by Oxford students of Oriental languages; the book best remembered to-day is no doubt Anthony Wood’s _Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis_ published in 1674.

To this period belongs also the first exercise of the privilege to print Bibles and Prayer Books, which was recognized, as we have seen, at least as early as 1637, when the Stationers’ Company paid the University to refrain from printing Bibles. This agreement lasted until 1642, and, by renewal at intervals, until 1672, when it was at length denounced; and in 1675 a quarto English Bible was printed _at the Theater_, and a beginning made of what has become an extensive and highly technical process of manufacture and distribution.

Early in the eighteenth century the Press acquired, with a new habitation, a name still in very general use. The University was granted the perpetual copyright of Clarendon’s _History of the Rebellion_ (a possession in which it was confirmed by the Copyright Act of 1911); and the _Clarendon Building_ was built chiefly from the profits accruing from the sales of that book. Many editions were printed in folio at various dates; and the Press Catalogue still offers the fine edition of 1849, with the notes of Bishop Warburton, in seven volumes octavo, and that of the _Life_ in two volumes, 1857; the whole comprising over 5,000 pages and sold for £4 10_s._ Still cheaper is the one-volume edition of 1843, in 1,366 pages royal octavo, the price of which is 21_s._ More recently the demands of piety have been still further satisfied by the issue of a new edition based on fresh collations made from the manuscript by the late Dr. Macray. Though the Clarendon Building long since ceased to be a printing house, one of its rooms is still _The Delegates’ Room_; and there the Delegates of the Press hold their stated meetings.

In the eighteenth century the Bible Press grew in strength with the co-operation of London booksellers and finally with the establishment (in 1770, if not earlier) of its own Bible Warehouse in Paternoster Row. The Learned Press, on the other hand, though some important books were produced, suffered from the general apathy which then pervaded the University. Sir William Blackstone, having been appointed a Delegate, found that his colleagues did not meet, or met only to do nothing; and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor a vigorous pamphlet, in which he described the Press as ‘languishing in a lazy obscurity, and barely reminding us of its existence, by now and then slowly bringing forth a Program, a Sermon printed by request, or at best a Bodleian Catalogue’. The great lawyer’s polemic gradually battered down the ramparts of ignorant negligence, and the Press began to revive under the new statute which he promoted. Dr. Johnson in 1767 was able to assure his sovereign that the authorities at Oxford ‘had put their press under better regulation, and were at that time printing _Polybius_’.

The Clarendon Building is not large, and the Press very soon outgrowing it was partly housed in various adjacent buildings, until in 1826-30 the present Press in Walton Street was erected. It is remarkable that though the building is more like a college than a factory—it is of the quadrangular plan regular in Oxford—and was built when printing was still mainly a handicraft, it has been found possible to adapt its solid fabric and spacious rooms to modern processes with very little structural alteration. Extensive additions, however, have been and are even now being made.

The activities of the nineteenth century are too various to detail; but a few outstanding facts claim mention. The Bible business continued to prosper, and gained immensely in variety by the introduction of Oxford India paper and by the publication, in conjunction with Cambridge, of the Revised Version of the Old and New Testaments. Earlier in the century there was a period of great activity in the production of editions of the Classics, in which Gaisford played a great part and to which many foreign scholars like Wyttenbach and Dindorf gave their support. Later, in the Secretaryships of Kitchin (for many years afterwards Dean of Durham) and of Bartholomew Price, new ground was broken with the famous _Clarendon Press Series_ of school books by such scholars as Aldis Wright, whose editions of Shakespeare have long served as a quarry for successive editors. The _New English Dictionary_ began to be published in 1884. Meanwhile the manufacturing powers of the Press at Oxford and the selling powers of the publishing house in London were very widely extended by the energies of Mr. Horace Hart and Mr. Henry Frowde, and the foundations were laid of the great and multifarious enterprises which belong to the history of the last twenty years.

The growth of the Press in the first two decades of the present century is due to the co-operation of a large number of individuals: of the members of the University who have acted as Delegates; of their officers, managers, and employees; and of the authors of Oxford books. In so far, however, as this period of its history can be identified with the name of one man, it will be remembered as that in which the late CHARLES CANNAN served the Delegates as Secretary. The Delegates at his death placed on record their judgement that he had made an inestimable contribution to the prosperity and usefulness of the Press. The _Times Literary Supplement_, in reviewing the last edition of the _Oxford University Roll of Service_, gave some account of the services performed by the University in the war. One paragraph dealt with the work of the Press:—

‘Probably no European Press did more to propagate historical and ethical truth about the war. The death of its Secretary, Charles Cannan, a year ago, has left an inconsolable regret among all those more fortunate Oxford men, old and young, who had the honour to be acquainted with one of the finest characters and most piercing intelligences of our time. He was a very great man, and is alive to-day in the spirit of the institution which he enriched with his personality and his life.’

II

THE PRESS TO-DAY

§ 1. _The Press at Oxford_

The main building of the Oxford Press, erected 1826-30, consists of three sides of a quadrangle. The two main wings, each of three floors, are still known as the _Learned Side_ and the _Bible Side_, though their appropriation to Bibles and secular books has long since ceased in fact. On the Learned Side are the hand composing rooms, both the book department and the jobbing department, where some readers and compositors are employed in setting up the official papers of the University, examination papers, and other miscellaneous work, and the more difficult and complicated books produced for the Delegates or other publishers.

The total quantity of type in the Press is estimated at over one million pounds of metal, and includes some 550 different founts of type in some 150 different characters, ranging from the hieroglyphic and the prehistoric ‘Minoan’ (cast to record Sir Arthur Evans’s discoveries), to the phonetic scripts of Sweet and Passy; and including Sanskrit, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Amharic, Coptic, Armenian, Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Sinhalese, Tamil, Gothic, Cyrillic. Here, too, are the famous Fell types acquired by the University about 1667. These are virtually the same as the founts from which were printed the first edition of _The Faerie Queene_ and the First Folio Shakespeare; and their beauty makes them still the envy of printers all the world over. Here compositors are still daily engaged in setting the Oxford Dictionary (with its twenty-one different sizes or characters of type), which has been slowly growing since 1882. One compositor has a record of thirty-eight years’ continuous work on the Dictionary.

In part of the same wing is the _Delegates’ Warehouse_. Here, and in a number of annexes, including the old _Delegates’ School_ built about 1840, repose the oldest and most durable of the Delegates’ publications. They are stored for the most part in lofty stacks of unfolded sheets, like the piers of a Norman crypt. From these vaults was drawn into the upper air, in 1907, the last copy of Wilkins’s _Coptic New Testament_, published in 1716, the paper hardly discoloured and the impression still black and brilliant. It is estimated that these warehouses contain some three and a half million copies of about four thousand five hundred distinct books.

Of the _Bible Side_ the ground floor is now the press room or _Machine Room_, which, with its more recent extensions, holds about fifty machines, from the last survivor of the old flat-impression double Platens to the most modern American double-cylinder ‘perfecting’ presses with their automatic ‘feeders’. All kinds of printing are done here, from the small numbers of an oriental book or a Prayer Book in black and red to the largest impression of a Bible printed in sheets containing 320 pages each. The long experience of printing Bibles on thin paper and especially on Oxford India paper has given the Oxford machine-minder an unrivalled dexterity in the nice adjustment required to produce a fine clean effect on paper which will not stand a heavy impression.

As the sheets come from machine they are sent to the _Bindery_. This was until recently on the floor above the machine room, but has lately been transferred to a larger and more convenient building erected in the old garden behind the Press. The Oxford Bindery deals with most of the Clarendon Press books in cloth bindings, and prides itself upon the fine finish of the cases and gilding of such beautiful books as the _Oxford Book of English Verse_, as well as on being able to turn out artistic and attractive cloth and paper bindings for books sold at the lowest prices. It still deals with a part only of the books printed under the same roof; but a large expansion is looked for in the near future.

Between the two wings, and across the quadrangle, are two houses once occupied by the late Horace Hart and by Dr. Henry Bradley, now the senior of the three editors of the Oxford Dictionary. The houses became some years ago unfit for habitation from the encroachment of machinery; but one of them was a welcome refuge during the years of war to the staff of the Oxford Local Examinations, who on the 5th of August 1914 were turned out of their office at an hour’s notice to make room for a Base Hospital.

Adjacent to the houses are the fire-proof _Plate Room_, where some 750 tons of metal are stored, the _Stereotype and Electrotype Foundry_, and the _Monotype Rooms_, a department which has lately added to its equipment and bids fair to pass the ancient composing rooms in output. Other departments in and about the old building are the _Photographic Room_, famous for its collotype printing, the _Type Foundry_, where Fell type is still cast from the old matrices, and the _Ink Factory_.

The front of the building on Walton Street consists chiefly of packing rooms, where books are dispatched by rail or road to the City of London and elsewhere, and of offices—those of the Printer to the University on the ground floor and those of the Secretary to the Delegates above. Here are reference libraries of books printed or published by the Press, and records ranging from the oldest Delegates’ minute-book of the seventeenth century to modern type-written correspondence arranged on the ‘vertical’ system of filing.

As the visitor enters the main gate the first object which catches his eye is a plain stone monument on the lawn. There are inscribed the names of the forty-four men of the Oxford Press who gave their lives in the War. Beyond the memorial is the quadrangle, made beautiful by grass and old trees; and from upper windows it is still possible to look over the flats of the Thames Valley and see the sun set behind Wytham Woods.

Corporate feeling has always been strong among the workers at the Press, and though the Delegates and their officers have done what they could to promote it, it is essentially a natural growth. Many of the work-people come of families which have been connected with the Press for generations; and they are proud not only of the old traditions of fine and honest work, but also of the usefulness and scholarly excellence of the books on which their labour is spent. The Press is, in all its parts, conscious at once of its unity and of its relation to the University of which it is an integral part.

THE NAGEL BUILDING

This spirit is well shown by the history of the Press Volunteer Fire Brigade, constituted in 1885. The Brigade now numbers thirty-two officers and men, who by regular drills and competitions have made themselves efficient firemen, and able to assist the Oxford City Brigade in case of need. The Press possesses also a branch of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, and first aid can be given at once if any accident happens.

Various Provident and Benevolent Societies exist at the Press, and the principle of co-operation by the employer was recognized for many years before the passing of the National Health Insurance Act. The Hospitals Fund makes substantial yearly contributions to the Radcliffe Infirmary and the Oxford Eye Hospital, and in view of the pressing needs of these institutions the subscription to the Fund has recently been doubled.

The common life naturally finds expression in the organization of recreation of all kinds. There is a Dramatic Society, the records of which go back to 1860; an Instrumental Society, dating from 1852; a Vocal Society, a Minstrel Society, a Piscatorial Society; Athletic, Cricket, Football, and Bowls Clubs, now amalgamated; and, not the least useful nor the least entertaining, the Gardening Association, formed during the war to meet the demand for more potatoes. Such of the men of the Press as were obliged to content themselves with the defence of the home front, responded with enthusiasm in their own gardens and allotments; and the Food Production Exhibition which crowned their efforts in the summer of 1918 became an annual event. In peace, as in war, there is need for all the food we can produce; and the Gardening Association has very wisely not relaxed its efforts.