Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921 · Oxford University Press
FOUR FOUNDERS OF THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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.’
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.