The History of Oxford University Press
Three-volume set
Edited by Ian Gadd, Simon Eliot, and W. Roger Louis
From Our Blog
By Simon Eliot and John Feather In the 1860s, the introduction of its first named series of education books, the 'Clarendon Press Series' (CPS), encouraged the Press to standardize its payments to authors. Most of them were offered a very generous deal: 50 or 60% of net profits. These payments were made annually and were recorded in the minutes of the Press' newly-established Finance Committee. The list of payments lengthened every year, as new titles were published and very few were ever allowed to go out of print.
Posted on March 6, 2014
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By Simon Eliot With the French Revolution creating a wave of exiles the Press responded with a very uncharacteristic publication. This was a 'Latin Testament of the Vulgate Translation' for emigrant French clergy living in England after the Revolution. In 1796, the Learned (not the Bible) side of the Press issued Novum Testamentum Vulgatae Editionis: Juxta Exemplum Parisiis Editum apud Fratres Barbou.
Posted on February 27, 2014
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By Simon Eliot Ever since the end of the First World War Oxford University Press had been keen to re-establish some sort of presence in the German book trade. Germany had been a significant market for its academic books in the nineteenth century, and a number of German scholars had edited Greek and Roman texts for the Press. Nevertheless the depressed state of the German economy and the uncertainty of its currency had made this impossible in the first few years after 1918.
Posted on February 13, 2014
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By Simon Eliot Oxford was finally linked to the rail network in June 1844. Within a decade or so the railway had become part of the way in which Oxford University Press at all levels conducted its business and its pleasure. One such pleasure was a wayzgoose.
Posted on February 6, 2014
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Simon Eliot For most of the history of the printed book, from Gutenberg in 1455 onwards, the most expensive part of the material book was paper. Until the mid-nineteenth century, by which time paper was being made by steam-driven machines using esparto grass and wood pulp rather than traditional linen rag as raw material, paper commonly represented at least half the cost of a book's production.
Posted on January 30, 2014
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By Simon Eliot Oxford University was a large mass-producer of books by the 1820s. Despite this, it was still occupying a very elegant but modest-sized neo-classical building in the centre of Oxford designed for it in 1713 by Nicholas Hawksmoor. By the mid-1820s this building was bursting at the seams.
Posted on January 23, 2014
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By Simon Eliot For most readers at most times, books were not essential. They were to be bought, if they were to be bought at all, out of disposable income. For most families in the nineteenth century, if they were lucky enough to have any disposable income, it would be a matter of two (10p) or three shillings (15p) a week at best.
Posted on February 20, 2014
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By Thorin Tritter I wrote before about the picture that serves as the cover for the chapter on Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in Volume 3 of the newly published History of Oxford University Press. I personally enjoy looking at this type of picture and trying to imagine what went on inside.
Posted on January 2, 2014
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By Thorin Tritter I had the pleasure of writing the chapter about Oxford University Press's early operations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand for volume three of the new History of Oxford University Press. A photo editor added an early photograph of the first home to the Canadian branch as the cover image for my chapter. It is a photograph I have seen before, but to be honest, I had previously not looked at it very closely.
Posted on December 26, 2013
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By Elizabeth Knowles Dictionary projects can famously, and sometimes fatally, overrun. In the nineteenth century especially, dictionaries for the more recondite foreign languages of past and present (from Coptic to Sanskrit) were compiled by independent scholars, enthusiasts who were ready to dedicate their lives to a particular project.
Posted on January 9, 2014
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By Martyn Ould Someone on even the most cursory visit to Oxford must surely see two fine buildings that once housed the University Press: the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building, close to each other on today's Broad Street. If they venture further afield, perhaps heading for the restaurants and bars along Walton Street, they also can't fail to notice the neo-classical building that has been the Press's current home since 1832. What they'll never see however is the Press's second home.
Posted on November 21, 2013
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By Ian Gadd No visit to the Sheldonian Theatre would be complete without craning your neck to admire Robert Streater's painted ceiling. Entitled Truth Descending upon the Arts and Sciences and comprising thirty-two panels, the painting was completed in Whitehall in 1668'9 and shipped to Oxford by barge. We don't know the terms of the commission but Streater's personification of Truth triumphing over Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance fitted well with a University looking to reassert its cultural ambitions in the aftermath of the Civil Wars and Interregnum.
Posted on November 14, 2013
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By Ian Gadd Determining the precise beginning of Oxford University Press is not as easy a question as it may seem. It's not enough to brandish triumphantly the first book printed in Oxford, Expositio in symbolum apostolorum, as all that proves is that there was a printing press in Oxford in 1478'¦
Posted on November 13, 2013
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To celebrate the publication of the first three volumes of The History of Oxford University Press on Thursday and University Press Week, we're sharing various materials from our Archive and brief scholarly highlights from the work's editors and contributors. To begin, we'd like to introduce a silent film made in 1925 by the Federation of British Industry.
Posted on November 11, 2013
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By Simon Eliot Until the 1840s time in Oxford, and therefore at the University Press, was five minutes behind that of London. With no uniform national time until the coming of the railways and the telegraph, the sealed clocks carried by mail coaches would have to be adjusted to Oxford or London time as they were shuttled between the two cities.
Posted on December 12, 2013
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By Simon Eliot All powered printing machines needed an effective means of inking type at speed. In most cases this was done by the use of rollers. The earliest prototypes had been covered with leather but, as a sheet of leather had to be joined to create covering for a cylinder, there was always a sewn seam that did not distribute the ink evenly.
Posted on December 5, 2013
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By Ian Gadd 'This Lane is commonly called Pie Lane, but I will call it Winking Lane'. So noted the Christ Church canon, Leonard Hutten, in his perambulatory Antiquities of Oxford, written at some point in the early seventeenth century.
Posted on November 12, 2013
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By Scott Mandelbrote On 9 November 1683, Robert Morison was knocked down by a coach in the Strand. He died the following day. At the time, Morison was both botanist to King Charles II and Professor of Botany in the University of Oxford, where he lectured regularly in the Botanic Garden.
Posted on December 19, 2013
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Oxford University has been involved with the printing trade since the 15th century and our Archive holds the records of the University's printing and publishing activities from the 17th century to date. This week our archivists have generously unearthed some pictures to share with you.
Posted on November 15, 2013
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By John Feather From 1715 to 1758, Stephen and Zaccheus Richardson were successively the 'Warehouse Keepers' for Oxford University Press. The seemingly innocuous title conceals more than it reveals and yet is telling. In William Laud's original vision of a university press at Oxford in the 1630s at the heart of the enterprise was to be an individual known as the 'Architypographus'.
Posted on November 28, 2013
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