Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:51:12.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The rise of London’s book-trade

from TECHNIQUE AND TRADE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Get access

Summary

Any study of the late medieval history of the book in Britain must eventually turn to London where, from the fifteenth century onwards, the enterprise of various people involved with making, importing or selling books made the City dominant in national book commerce. The years covered by the present volume take in a remarkable period in London’s trade history, beginning in 1403, with civic ordinances of incorporation granted to a common fraternity of London book artisans (regularly known by the 1440s as the Mistery of Stationers), and ending in 1557, with the royal charter creating the Company of Stationers. Each of these formal organizations was itself the result of a separate major trade development: first, the rise of retail commerce in manuscript books, both newly commissioned and used, as a full-time occupation for book artisans and entrepreneurs drawn to London by its offer of economic opportunity; and second, the subsequent rise of broad-scale commerce in printed books, initially by foreign, but eventually by native, publishers and printers working to create a wholesale trade. Aspects of these two forms of book commerce constitute the basis of this chapter.

The early stages of London’s book-trade history have long been a matter for speculation, largely because little evidence bearing on book commerce survives. In City of London archives, we find the first mention of the trade in 1403, when various book craftsmen sought to form a common fraternity, uniting older guilds of manuscript artists and of text-writers, whose trade interests were now also to be joined with those of other Londoners who bound and sold books.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, J. J. G. 1972William Abell “lymnour” and English fifteenth-century illumination’, in Rosenauer, A. and Weber, G. (eds.), Kunsthistorische Forschungen Otto Pächt zu ehren, Vienna.Google Scholar
Armstrong, E. 1979English purchases of printed books from the Continent 1465–1526’, English Historical Review, 94.Google Scholar
Christianson, C. Paul 1987aAn early Tudor stationer and the “prynters of bokes”’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 6th ser., 9.Google Scholar
Christianson, C. Paul 1987b Memorials of the book trade in medieval London: the archives of Old London Bridge, Woodbridge.
Christianson, C. Paul 1989aA community of book artisans in Chaucer’s London’, Viator, 20.Google Scholar
Christianson, C. Paul 1989bChancery standard and the records of Old London Bridge’, in Trahern, J. B. Jr (ed.), Standardizing English: essays in the history of language change, Knoxville TN.Google Scholar
Christianson, C. Paul 1989cEvidence for the study of London’s late medieval manuscript-book trade’, in Griffiths, J. and Pearsall, D. A., Book production and publishing in Britain 1375–1475, Cambridge 1989.Google Scholar
Christianson, C. Paul 1990 A directory of London stationers and book artisans 1300–1500, New York.
Christianson, C. Paul 1993The stationers of Paternoster Row, 1534–1557’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 87.Google Scholar
,Corporation of London Record Office mss. Bridge House Rents 6, 1525–41; 7, 1541–54; 8, 1554–68; 9, 1568–83.
,Corporation of London Record Office, ms. Journal of the Court of Common Council 11, 1505–18, f. 152r.
,Corporation of London Record Office, ms. Journal of the Court of Common Council 9, 1482–92, f. 330r.
,Corporation of London Record Office, mss. Letter-Book Q, 1540–49, fols. 263v–264r.
Davis, N. (ed.) 1971–6 The Paston letters, 2 vols., Oxford.
De Hamel, C. F. R. 1986 A history of illuminated manuscripts, Oxford; 2nd edn 1990.
Doyle, A. I. 1957The work of a late fifteenth-century scribe, William Ebesham’, Bulletin of the John Rylands (University) Library, 39.Google Scholar
Doyle, A. I. 1988The printed books of the last monks of Durham’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 6th ser., 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doyle, A. I. and Parkes, M. B. 1978The production of copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the early fifteenth century’, in Parkes, M. B. and Watson, A. G. (eds.), Medieval scribes, manuscripts and libraries: essays presented to N. R. Ker, London 1978.Google Scholar
Duff, E. G. 1905 A century of the English book trade. Short notices of all printers, stationers, bookbinders, and others connected with it from the issue of the first dated book in 1457 to the incorporation of the Company of Stationers in 1557, London (rpt 1948).
Duff, E. G. 1906 The printers, stationers and booksellers of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535, Cambridge.
Duff, E. G. 1907bEarly Chancery proceedings concerning members of the book trade’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 2nd ser., 8.Google Scholar
Duff, E. G. 1908Notes on stationers from the Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1523–4’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 2nd ser., 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edmunds, S. 1991From Schoeffer to Vérard: concerning the scribes who became printers’, in Hindman, 1991.
Erler, M. C. 1988Wynkyn de Worde’s will’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 6th ser., 10.Google Scholar
Gray, G. J. 1904 The earlier Cambridge stationers and bookbinders and the first Cambridge printer, Bibliographical Soc. Illust. Monographs 13, London.
Harris, K. 1989Patrons, buyers and owners: the evidence for ownership, and the role of book owners in book production and the book trade’, in Griffiths, J. and Pearsall, D. A., Book production and publishing in Britain 1375–1475, Cambridge 1989, 163–99.Google Scholar
Juchhoff, R. 1954Johannes de Westfalia als Buchhändler’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1954.Google Scholar
Kerling, N. J. M. 1955Caxton and the trade in printed books’, Book Collector, 4.Google Scholar
König, E. 1983A leaf from a Gutenberg Bible illuminated in England’, British Library Journal, 9.Google Scholar
König, E. 1991New perspectives on the history of Mainz printing: a fresh look at illuminated imprints’, in Hindman, 1991.
Lyall, R. J. 1989Materials: the paper revolution’, in Griffiths, J. and Pearsall, D. A., Book production and publishing in Britain 1375–1475, Cambridge 1989.Google Scholar
Lyell, L. (ed.) 1936 Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 1453–1527, Cambridge.
Meale, C.M. 1992The publication of romance in late Medieval England’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 6th ser., 14.Google Scholar
Mynors, R. A. B. 1950A fifteenth-century scribe: T. Werken’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1, 2.Google Scholar
Nixon, H. M. 1976Caxton, his contemporaries and successors in the book trade from Westminster documents’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 5th ser., 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parkes, M. B. 1961A fifteenth-century scribe: Henry Mere’, Bodleian Library Record, 6.Google Scholar
Phelps, W. H. 1979Some sixteenth-century stationers’ wills’, Studies in Bibliography, 32.Google Scholar
Plomer, H. R. 1925 Wynkyn de Worde & his contemporaries from the death of Caxton to 1535, London.
Pollard, G. 1937aThe Company of Stationers before 1557’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 4th ser., 18.Google Scholar
Pollard, G. 1937bThe early constitution of the Stationers’ Company’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 4th ser., 18.Google Scholar
Pollard, G. 1970The names of some English fifteenth-century binders’, The Library. Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 5th ser., 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, G. 1978aThe English market for printed books: the Sandars Lectures 1959’, Publishing History, 4.Google Scholar
Reed, A. W. 1920The regulation of the book trade before the proclamation of 1538’, Trans. of the Bibliog. Soc., 15.Google Scholar
Rhodes, D. E. 1958Don Fernando Colon and his London book purchases, June 1522’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richmond, C. 1981 John Hopton: a fifteenth-century Suffolk gentleman, Cambridge.
Ruddock, A. A. 1941 Italian merchants and shipping in Southampton 1270–1600, Southampton.
Salter, H. E. (ed.) 1932 Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis 1434–1469, 2 vols., Oxford Historical Society 93, 94, Oxford.
Scott, K. L. 1968A mid-fifteenth-century English illuminating shop and its customers’, JWCI, 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, K. L. 1980aAdditions to the oeuvre of the English border artist: the Nova statuta’, in The Mirrour of the Worlde: MS Bodley 283, Roxburghe Club, London.Google Scholar
Sharpe, R. R. (ed.) 1889–1912 Calendar of letter-books of the City of London, 11 vols., London.
Sutton, A. F. 1992Caxton was a mercer: his social milieu and friends’, in Rogers, N. (ed.), England in the fifteenth century: proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 4, Stamford.Google Scholar
Winger, H. R. 1956Regulations relating to the book trade in London from 1357 to 1586’, Lib. Q., 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×