NOV 1 m GIFT The University Press Oxford THE SHBl?.l}0>[m Jv 'Tl^lfS-l^iljKE/. THE EARLIEST UNIVERSITY PRIKTIN«-HOUSE 1669 * 1468'— 1911 » THE JiI^I-Yfi{l§n^Y/^Rte 1517 The Uiiiyersity Press Oxford ILLUSTRATIONS OI OXE OF THE SEVEN GRANDS I'RIX GAINED HY THE PRESS AT THE BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION 1910 THE CLARENDON BUILDING, USED AS THE PRINTING-HOUSE 1713-1830 (From the Oxford Almanack 1905) THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS '1468'— 1911 Abridged from A Brief Account of the University Press, by Falconer Madan. With additions THE OXFOED UNI VERSITY PRESS, alone among the Presses of the world, is able to produce a list of all its publications for 326 years. *aodAfB a(figti«£ 2) ( mqiiam !jcc feoinbu tratMCioms fiipca epfoUix rcgubm con fcquantuc a&iicrtimiis beprecpmuc xt nobis et etnmbug cjuj ipc an?>imat cence &at ItommuB fibe quam fitrtepimufl cijflo l>iacupAi.conriiniatocj;pei:tat5B iuflirie t»pofitam cc»t»nam ; cf fmtetnn mfec eof ,Uc\o fancti Irwjn'mi ni fiinlx>lo apof^olcMum a5 papam lauts eitim Irnprcfla ©ponic <5t fmita Art no ^mmi . AV » Cccc t Ipviij • pvij-Sie Ceccmbba • A PAGE FROM THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED AT OXFORD The first Oxford book known is the Latin Com- mentary by St. Jerome (really by Rufinus of Aquileia) on the Apostles' Creed, which bears the date 1468 ; but this was, probably, an intentional misstatement, and, as Mr. Falconer Madan says in his Brief Account^ the greater the bibliographer the more certain he is that the true date is 1478. In 1468 only Italy, Germany, and Switzerland possessed the art of printing. 224G32 2 THE OXFORP XJNIVEESITY PEESS The Press at Oxford lias had three lives. Its first period of activity carde to an end in 1486-7, and sixteen dijBferent books comprise its output. One of these is noteworthy as having its colophon in red, affording the earliest instance of printing in colours in England; another contains the earliest woodcut- border known in England ; a third, which is assumed to be a product of the Oxford Press, is Cicero's Oratio pro Milone^ the first classic printed in England. It is supposed that Theodoric Eood, coming from Cologne, printed these books by himself at Oxford. The life of the second Press was brief in the extreme. It lasted from 1517 to 1519, and only eight of its publi- cations are known. All, except a broadside, bear the arms of the University, and three are issued cum privilegio, i.e. of the Chancellor. All the provincial presses of the first half of the sixteenth century were similarly short-lived. Continuous Activity since 1585 The third epoch dates from the year 1585, when with £100 lent by the University, Joseph Barnes, bookseller, of Oxford, began printing, and the Oxford Press has been in continuous activity ever since. The moving spirit in initiating this enterprise was the Earl of Leicester, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth. At first the printing was carried on in hired premises. In 1586 appeared the first Greek book, six selected homilies of St. Chrysostom, and ten years later Hebrew type is met with. In 1595 appeared Wermueller's Perl mewn adfyd, a Welsh translation of an English version of the original German, with the new imprint ' yn Ehydychen *, the latter being the Welsh word for a ford of Oxen. Among other books printed by Barnes CONTINUOUS ACTIVITY SINCE 1585 3 are the first English edition of the Latin text of Richard de Bury's Philohihlon sive de amove lihrorum (1599) ; the first Catalogue of the Bodleian Library (1605) ; Brian Twyne's Antiquitatis academiae Oxoniensis Apologia, the earliest history of the University (1608) ; and Captain John Smith's Map [and Account] of Virginia^ issued perhaps at 105. and now worth £125. In the year 1599 'a tracte containing the artes of curious Paintinge, Caruinge, and Buildinge written first in Italian by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo painter of Milan ' was printed in an English translation. Archbishop Laud zealously fostered the growing Press, obtaining for it various valuable privileges. In the years 1621-38 five editions of Burton's immortal Anatomy of Melancholy were printed, and in 1640 Bacon's Advancement of Learning was produced. In 1658 was appointed the first Architypographus or Controller of the Press — an office contemplated in the Laudian Statutes — and, eleven years after, the muni- ficence of Archbishop Sheldon provided a new and spacious house for the academical printers. The Earliest Type Foundry Dr. John Fell, Bishop of Oxford 1675-86, a great patron and reformer of the University, and an ardent promoter of learning and of the Learned Press, first established a regular type foundry at Oxford in 1667, having presented in the previous year valuable matrixes procured in Germany, France, and Holland. The earliest printers in England obtained their first type from abroad, and Caxton, for instance, printed at Westminster for at least a year before he founded letters. The first Oxford type also is from Cologne, and not till 1586 at the very earliest did the trade of letter- 4 THE OXFOED UNIVERSITY PEESS founder become a distinct one in England. But the honour of establishing the first high-class type foundry, properly equipped, belongs to the University Press at Oxford, thanks to Dr. Fell. The two first type-founders at Oxford were Dutch- men, one being named Peter Walpergen, who was succeeded by his son, who died in 1714, and he by Sylvester Andrews, whose foundry was removed to London in 1733. The fount of Coptic type in the Oxford foundry was given by the Burgomaster of Amsterdam. Not the least interesting part of the Fell donation is the music type, generally called Walpergen's type, which is reproduced in the 1695 Oxford Type-book ; but musical printing was known at an earlier date in Oxford, type having been used for it first in 1660, and engraving as early as 1609. Much of Dr. Fell's type, known in his honour as Fell Type, is in use at the present time. Naturally the types would have been worn out in the course of cen- turies, but by means of the matrixes the Press has been able to cast the founts afresh as they have become worn out. The Univeesity Paper-Mill It was Dr. Fell who encouraged about 1670 the fitting up of a Paper-mill at Wolvercote, where the Oxford India paper is now made. It was he who bore the brunt of the long struggle with the London Stationers and the King's Printers about the privilege of printing Bibles, Prayer Books, and Almanacks, which lasted from about 1660 till after Dr. Fell's death in 1636. And in 1671 he was the chief of a syndicate of four who took over the management of the Press, paying the University the accustomed £200 a year for it, and THE FIEST PEINTING-HOUSE 5 expending about £4,000 from their own resources. Lastly, he had the charge of the building of the new home of the Press, the Sheldonian Theatre, and is credited with having originally suggested the idea to the archbishop. The Sheldonian Theatee In 1669 the new Theatre was opened, and the Press installed in it. But on special occasions its work was seriously disturbed, and the presses were hustled off into the basement, while the paper and printed sheets were placed between the ceiling and the roof More- over, as early as 1688, the working of the heavy presses was found to be injuring the building, and the Learned and Bible Presses were, therefore, removed from the Theatre : see below. In 1677 Francis Junius augmented Fell's gifts by presenting matrixes of Gothic, Runic, and Anglo- Saxon ; and the foundry was so well supplied that in 1693 it issued a first specimen of types, displaying a richer variety of languages and type than any other Press in the country could show. It was for this reason that when an edition of the Lord's Prayer in more than a hundred languages was published at London, in 1700 and 1713, pp. 9-24 (two sheets), con- taining Hebrew, Samaritan, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Gothic, Eunic, Icelandic, and Slavonic type, were Oxford printing. The 1695 edition is the first specimen produced anywhere in which a particular passage of Scripture (in this case the Lord's Prayer) is reproduced in polyglot. In the present century more than 150 languages, each with its appropriate type, can be offered to the 6 THE OXFOED UNIVEESITY PEESS prospective author or editor, including Eskimo, and even the Cretan or Eteo-Cretan characters lately dis- covered by Dr. Arthur Evans. The Oldest Newspaper The Oxford Press is identified with the. oldest news- paper in England. King Charles went to Oxford in 1665 to escape the Plague, and there an autumn session of Parliament was held. The first number of an official gazette was published on November 15 as the Oxford Gazette, and it was not until the twenty- fourth number, when the printing had been removed from Oxford, that the title was changed to the London Gazette. The issue of the Gazette for Friday, February 17, 1911, bears the series-number 28,466. The First Oxford Bible Although the right of the University to print Bibles was clearly admitted as far back as 1637, the Bible Press did not begin till 1675, and the first Oxford Bible and Prayer Book bear that date. However, the Wyclifite Bible, the first English Bible which appeared in the fourteenth century, might reasonably be called the Oxford Bible, because it was with the reform party at Oxford that it took its inception. The year 1674 saw the beginnings of the splendid series of Oxford Sheet Almanacks, and since 1676 a new almanack has been issued yearly, among the artists who drew designs being J. M. W. Turner. The Clarendon Press In 1713 the Press removed to a new printing-house — the Clarendon Building, the name being derived from Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, author of the THE CLAEENDON PEESS 7 History of the Rebellion, from the profits of which the house was chiefly built. Owing to this peculiar con- nexion the University is still allowed to hold the perpetual copyright of Clarendon's great work. The history of the Coptic New Testament, edited by David Wilkins and published in 1716, illustrates the long continuity of the Press. It was issued at 126'. 6c?., and all through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries its price seems not to have varied. At last in April, 1907, the last copy was fairly sold off at the original price, and this book, after 191 years of sale (during 130 of which there was no rival edition), drops from the Clarendon Press Catalogue into the less dignified class of second-hand books. During the eighteenth century the Bible Press seems to have flourished, and the ordinary eighteenth-century Bible met with in catalogues is more often from Oxford than from London or Cambridge. The University acquired not later than 1770 a London Bible Ware- house in Paternoster Eow. Eemarkable Editions Among the remarkable Bibles and Prayer Books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the famous Greek New Testament of Dr. J. Mill (1707), which was absolutely the first to provide an apparatus criticus; the ' Vinegar Bible ' of 1717, so called from an error in the running title at St. Luke xx, which should have been ' Parable of the Vineyard ', as is found (corrected) in some copies ; the first Oxford Hebrew Bible, edited by Nathaniel Forster (1750) ; the Folio Bible edited by Dr. J. Blayney in 1769, which was for many years the standard for the text of all Oxford Bibles, though it was itself by no means immaculate ; the Small Pica 8 THE OXFOED UNIVERSITY PEESS 8vo Reference Bible of 1824, which has ever since been the standard ; a Diamond 24mo Bible of 1842, which was the first book printed on real India paper (only twenty-four copies, none for sale, since the stock of paper was quite inadequate) ; the polyglot English Bible, edited by Forshall and Madden, giving the early English versions in parallel columns (1850); the Caxton Memorial Bible of 1877 ; and the Revised Version of 1881, of which a million Oxford copies were sold on the first day. Unfortunate Misprints Several editions have ^^nicknames from unfortunate misprints, such as the ' Vinegar ' Bible mentioned above, the 'Murderers' Bible of 1801 {murderers for murmurers in Jude 16), the 'Ears to ear' Bible, 1807 (Matt. xiii. 43), and the ' "Wife-hater ' Bible of 1810 {wife for life in Luke xiv. 26). Of one Latin New Testament there is an interesting history. The title tells much of it : — Novum Testamenfum Vulgatae editionis . . . Sumptibus Acodemiae Oxoniensis, in usum Cleri Galli- cani in Anglia exulantis. Cura et studio quorundam, ex eodem Clero Wintoniae commorantium. (Oxonii, e Typographeo Clarendoniano, mdccxcvi, 8vo.) Two thousand copies were printed by the University for free distribution among the French Refugee Clergy, and as many more were soon found necessary and were printed at the expense of the Duke of Buckingham. Bible Sales In 1815 it was ascertained that the number of Bibles printed in the preceding seven years was 460,500 ; of New Testaments, 386,600 ; of Common Prayer Books, 400,000; of Psalters, &c., 200,000, their total value BIBLE SALES 9 being £213,000, while the output of the Classical Side for the same period was estimated as worth only £24,000. In 1822 there were on sale nineteen editions of the Bible, nine Testaments, and twenty-one Prayer Books, varying in price from £5 106*. for a Royal Folio Bible to Sd. for a Nonpareil 24mo Prayer Book. In 1870 twenty-six editions of the Bible were on sale ; in 1895 seventy-eight editions, and ninety of the Prayer Book ; while in 1910 the numbers had grown to con- siderably upwards of one hundred editions of both the Bible and the Prayer Book. The sale of Prayer Books fluctuates more than that of the Bible. In recent years the former have gone out from Oxford at rates varying from 750,000 to 1,500,000 per annum, while the sale of Bibles has risen from 500,000 copies annually in 1875 to upwards of 1,250,000 at the present time. The Present Press Since 1830 the Press has occupied its present stately home in "Walton Street — the Bible Press in one wing and the Learned Press in the other. After ten years the use of hand-presses for Bibles and Prayer Books was abandoned, steam power being introduced, which in turn gave place entirely to gas power nine years ago. In 1860 modern stereotyping was introduced, electrotyping in 1863, and photographic printing in 1885. The Learned Press employs about 300 persons, chiefly compositors and proof-readers, and sets up in type the numerous Classical, English, and Oriental works for which the Press is famous. In the Bible Press about 400 persons, with sixty modern printing machines, produce on an average 3,000 copies of the Bible, not to 10 THE OXFORD UNIVEESITY PEESS mention Prayer Books, every day. Here, too, are tlie rooms for standing type, for folding and stitching the printed sheets, and for current binding work, such as is not sent to London for wholesale production. Electro- typing and stereotyping machines, and the greatly developed photographic department, with lithograph- ing and collotype appliances, occupy another part, and also the engines, boilers, and repairing works con- nected with the varied machinery used throughout the building. Oxford India Paper It is for Bibles that the Oxford India Paper, so extraordinarily thin, opaque, and tough, is chiefly used, and without it the ' smallest Bible ', measuring 3| X 2| X I inches, and weighing less than 3 ounces, could not be produced. The sales of this particular edition from its first issue in 1874 have amounted to more than one and a half millions. There can be no doubt that the introduction of Oxford India Paper has contributed largely to the pre- eminence which the Oxford editions of the Bible ®^Joy generally. This paper has revolutionized the Bible trade, and in general literature — for example, the Oxford Dante — it has done much to bring about the production of small, tasteful volumes in large type — books easy to read and easy to carry about. The famous Oxford India Paper has often been imitated, but, hitherto, has not been equalled. The story of its discovery is as follows : — In the year 1841 an Oxford graduate brought home from the Far East a small fold of extremely thin paper, which was manifestly more opaque and tough for its substance than any paper then manufactured in Europe. He presented it to the University Press, and it was found to be just sufficient OXFOED INDIA PAPER II for twenty-four copies of the smallest Bible then in existence — diamond 24mo — which were duly printed. The books were barely a third of the usual thickness, and although as much as £20 apiece was offered for them, no copies were sold, but they were presented to the Queen and various persons. The incident was in the course of time forgotten, but, in 1874, soon after Mr. Frowde became manager in London, experiments WATERMARK OF THE OXFORD INDIA PAPER < were again begun, and in the following year a Bible (the one referred to above) was placed on the market similar to the 1842 edition. At the Paris Exhibition in 1900 and at the Exhibition in Brussels last year this paper was awarded a Grand Prix. Management of the Pkess It should be explained that the whole business of the Press has been carried on since 1585, when the first board was chosen, under the direction of eleven Delegates of the Press, who consist of Heads of Col- leges and other eminent members of the Univer- sity. Mr. Charles Cannan has been Secretary to the 12 THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Delegates since 1898. It was not until 1883 that the- Bible and the Learned Presses were united under one management. Since that year Mr. Horace Hart has been the Controller of the Press — the Architypogra- phus Academiae Oxoniensis — who is in charge of all that relates to the printing. Mr. Henry Frowde is^ the Publisher to the University, and has occupied his present important position in London for thirty- seven years. All the works for which the University Press is responsible are published by Mr. Frowde at Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, London, handsome premises almost under the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral and in the heart of the old book-trade centre. The Fine Bindings The binding is mostly done at the University Binding House in London, which is directed by Mr. Frowde. Side by side are carried on in the Binding House, ordinary leather binding, and the binding of specially valuable books, the cost of which often exceeds £50 per volume. The skins of 100,000 animals are used every year for the covers of Oxford Bibles alone, and 400,000 sheets of gold are required for gilt letter- ing, to say nothing of gilt edges, for which a still larger quantity is employed. In addition to the leather made from goat and sheep skins, real crocodile skin, seal skin, the skin of snakes and frogs, and elephant hide are used for binding books. The Oxford University Press, it may be stated, was the only British binding house to obtain a Grand Prix at both the Paris and Brussels Exhibitions, and exquisite specimens of Oxford bindings can be seen in many of the more important museums of the world. THE HEAD OFFICE OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS IN" LONDON l"HE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIOXAllY AS IT WILL LOOK WIIEX CO^MPLETE A CAXTON MEMORIAL 13 A Caxton Memorial Two striking incidents in the recent history of the Press are worth recording. The Caxton Exhibition was opened on June 30, 1877, with a speech from Mr. W. E. Gladstone. The list of Bibles in the Exhibition was headed by the first Bible printed (1450-3?), and ended with one printed and bound within the twelve hours which preceded Mr. Gladstone's speech. The printing at Oxford actually began at two on that morning, from movable type which had not been used for some years. Exactly one hundred copies (each containing 1,052 pages) were printed, and num- bered consecutively ; the sheets were artificially dried and sent up to London by the nine o'clock morning ex- press. They were at once bound at the Oxford University Press Bindery in London, in turkey morocco, with gold lettering and the arms of the University on the side, and a parcel containing ten copies was taken to the Exhibition by two o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Gladstone considered that this feat might be called * the climax and consummation of printing '. The Revised Version Still more remarkable were the experiences connected with the publication of the Revised Version of the Bible, which was undertaken at the joint expense of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Some American firms made strenuous efforts to obtain ad- vance sheets of the Revised New Testament, but with- out success. It was on May 17, 1881, that the Revised Testament was published, and the run on the Oxford University Press London quarters was unprecedented ; upwards of a million copies being issued by Mr. Frowde 14 THE OXFOED UNIVEESITY PRESS between midniglit and midday. The Times of Chicago printed the whole of the New Testament as a supple- ment, and so that the ' copy ' might be set up in time the whole of the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Romans, were telegraphed to Chicago from New York. The Revised Version of the entire Bible was issued on May 18, 1885, and although thousands of people had the handling of the volume ere it reached the public, no advance copies were obtained by anybody. One-paper mill alone made sufficient paper for this edition to put a girdle round the earth one inch in thickness six times over, and the volumes piled flat would have reached a height of fourteen miles, or, on end, seventy-four miles. The revision was completed in 1895, when the Apocrypha was issued in the late autumn. Last year saw the publication of the Revised New Testament with re- markably full marginal references on which forty years *^ labour had been expended. In ancient times the books printed at Oxford con- sisted entirely of theology and ancient classics ; now they embrace all kinds of books, from the Oxford English Dictionary to elementary school books, and even little books suitable for Christmas cards which can be carried in a glove. The Oxford Dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary has been well de- scribed as the greatest engine of research in modern times, and as the greatest effort which any Press has taken in hand since the invention of printing. It was begun in 1882, and to January 1, 1911 A to Sc had been published, and also other instalments of words beginning with S and with T. So far as it had gone. THE OXFOED DICTIONARY 15^ the Dictionary contained a record of 287,056 words, illustrated by no fewer than 1,248,203 quotations. The cost of it, when completed, will be probably not less than £250,000; yet its price to the public does not exceed a halfpenny a page. Other Important Publications Mention should also be made of the Sacred Books of the East, now embracing with the Index, just published, fifty volumes ; the Oxford Classical Texts, numbering nearly sixty volumes ; the Anecdota Oxoniensia ; the series of botanical translations, in which some volumes, such as Warming's Oecology of Plants, are practically new books ; the Oxford Higher and the Oxford Modern French series ; and, of course, the Clarendon Press general series of school books, which have long been familiar. It is impracticable to single out in- dividual books, but exception must be made of the Oxford Dante, everywhere looked upon as the standard text; the various works on Dante, by Messrs. E. Moore, Paget Toynbee, H. F. Tozer, C. L. Shadwell, H. J. Chaytor, A. J. Butler, E. S. Sheldon, A. C. White, W. H. V. Reade, and W. W. Jackson, these books alone forming a little library ; the Oxford Book of Italian Verse, edited by Mr. St. John Lucas ; Dr. T. Hodgkin's eight-volume work Italy and her Invaders; and Mr. T. E. Peet's The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily. In many other directions the Press has been in the forefront ; not least in bringing out editions of the English classics, such as Shakespeare and Chaucer in folio (reproduced by the collotype process), and defini- tive editions of Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Lyly, Campion, Marlowe, Johnson, Walpole, Blake, Shelley, Keats, &c. The Tudor and Stuart Library of reprints is a recent 16 THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS series ; and the Oxford Library of Translations, chiefly of Latin and Greek classics, but also including Dante and Heine, has obtained the seal of public approval. • Wherever the tongue that Shakespeare wrote is read,' the Oxford Poets series (which now includes Gary's translation of Dante with Flaxman's famous illustra- tions) is familiar, as are also the carefully edited and low-priced reprints of standard authors, and the more recently added Oxford Library of Prose and Poetry and the ' World's Classics ', of which latter at present 162 volumes have been published and several million copies sold. Mr. Madan prepared a remarkable chart showing the output of the Oxford Press from its earliest days to 1900. During the years 1468 (i. e. 1478) to 1600 the total number of books printed was 148 ; in 1601-1650, 1,161 ; in 1651-1700, 1,428 ; in 1701-1750, 1,108 ; in 1751-1800, 1,365 ; in 1801-1850, 4,449 ; and in 1851-1900 the number was 9,816 — a total of 19,475. Reference has already been made to the Grands Prix obtained by the Oxford University Press for bindings and Oxford India Paper, but similar awards have been made for the actual printing and for the books themselves. The total number of Grands Prix secured by the Press at Brussels was seven, a fact that itself speaks volumes for the activity of the Delegates and their officers in modern times. The increasing business of the Press has necessitated the opening of branches in Edinburgh, Glasgow, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne. ONE OF THE OXFORD BINDINGS (DESTROYED IN THE FIRE AT THE BRUSSELS EXHIBITION) WHICH HELPED TO GAIN A GRAND PRIX FOR BINDINGS '• ?'-'l 'r / ^' r : A AN ILLITSTRAITON OF OXE OF THREF GllAXDS PRIX AWARDED TO THE OXFORD UXIVERSri'Y I'RESS AT THE PARIS EXHIBITION 1900 EXTERIOR OF THE PRESENT PRESS 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subjert to immediate recall. m'li ' NOV 2 7 1962 .' . - M/V ^ t' ?y^_ f^0v2 3 1963 JAN 2 1964 MAY 10 1966 MAY 1 7 1968 MAY 2 ISfifi NOV 1 9 ms MAY 3 1969 General Library LD 21-50to-8,'57 University of California (C8481sl0)476 Berkeley BY HORACE HART, M.A. RETURN LIBRARY SCHOOL LIBRARY TObh^ 2 South Hall 642-2253 LOAN PERIOD 1 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS DUE AS STAMPED BELOW AllC i Q 1Q7g DEC 1 5 1986 i i FORM NO. DD 18, 45m, 6'76 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY BERKELEY, CA 94720