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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
  • This book is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
  • Cited by 29
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
2002
Online ISBN:
9781139053488
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521661829
Subjects:
Literature, Printing and Publishing History, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature
Series:
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Literature
Information

Book description

Volume 4 of The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain covers the years between the incorporation of the Stationers' Company in 1557 and the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695. In a period marked by deep religious divisions, civil war and the uneasy settlement of the Restoration, printed texts - important as they were for disseminating religious and political ideas, both heterodox and state approved - interacted with oral and manuscript cultures. These years saw a growth in reading publics, from the developing mass market in almanacs, ABCs, chapbooks, ballads and news, to works of instruction and leisure. Atlases, maps and travel literature overlapped with the popular market but were also part of the project of empire. Alongside the creation of a literary canon and the establishment of literary publishing there was a tradition of dissenting publishing, while women's writing and reading became increasingly visible.

Reviews

'The bibliography is extensive and detailed, and the index comprehensive and thorough. … here we have, naturally in book form, a major scholarly survey of just about every aspect of the book, commercial, physical and intellectual.'

Source: Reference Reviews

‘… this fourth volume of the The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain will be a constant source of information and a stimulus to further thought: like its predecessor, it is a splendid achievement.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

‘… the editors deserve congratulation for persuading so many eminent scholars to write to their strengths in such a pleasantly readable manner.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'… the volume's range of scholarship is impressive. A rich group of illustrations … add to the reader's understanding of the texts themselves … must immediately become required reading for any student of early modern religion … All the contributors, as well as Cambridge University Press, must be congratulated on this splendidly comprehensive volume … it is a pleasure to read as well as an invaluable reference work.'

Source: Journal of Ecclesiastical History

'However, what this volume should do is encourage book historians out of their period and subject specialisms. It should also stimulate a broader acknowledgment of the importance of the book and the book trade.'

Source: Journal of the Printing Historical Society

'… our … most heartfelt thanks go to Cambridge University Press for a 'Cambridge History' fully worthy of its distinguished predecessors.'

Source: The Book Collector

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Contents

Page 2 of 3

Contents
  • 19 - Non-conformist voices and books
    pp 410-430
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter deals with the dissenting non-conformist books and voices in England during two specific time periods: between 1558 and 1625, and between 1625 and 1660. The non-conformists made specific and extensive use of the printed book: their identity and activities were partly defined by it. When printing and non-conformity are placed together, two phenomena stand out: the Marprelate tracts in 1589 and the great success of the Quakers in using the printed book to proselytize in the second half of the seventeenth century. Protestant dissent was finally excluded from established institutions by the restoration of the Church of England in 1660 and the ejection in 1662 of all ministers who refused to accept the established Church. Restoration dissenters were subject to a good deal of violent persecution. Most Churches consolidated themselves with institutional reviews, while the Quakers, remarkably, subjected themselves to a series of organizational regulations.
  • 20 - Women writing and women written
    pp 431-452
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Feminist literary historians have in recent years turned their attention to the early modern period for tracking the emergence of women writers into print and positing a burgeoning market in female literature. An enquiry of this kind must look to the relationship between the terms woman and writer, and consider woman as subject-matter for and in print. Using the history of the book as the frame work for discussion situates both women as writers and women as written in the context of the operations of the book trade. It allows women writers to be seen in relation to the intermediaries between writing and print (transcriber, amanuensis, editor, printer, bookseller) and in relation to a growing market for books about women. It takes into account the role of women in the material production of print (as printers, publisher/booksellers, binders, mercuries, hawkers); and bringing into view the evidence for women as consumers of print (buying, owning and reading books).
  • 21 - The Bible trade
    pp 455-473
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The only English-language version of the Bible published in Mary's reign was a New Testament in octavo printed in Geneva in 1557 by Protestant exiles. The King's Printer's privilege in the Authorized Version was (and remains) qualified: by virtue of royal charters granted to them separately the universities of Oxford and Cambridge could also claim the right to print it and thereby to share in the considerable profits that might be made from it. When royal authority collapsed in the early 1640s the Bible privilege ceased to be of value. The shortage was met in part by unauthorized editions imported from Holland. The Book of Common Prayer was treated in the same way in the printing house in being equipped with press figures and paper-quality marks when necessary. It differed, however, from the Bible in not apparently being pirated. The revisions were accommodated by setting the whole text anew, producing cancels, ranging from paste-over slips to whole gatherings.
  • 22 - English law books and legal publishing
    pp 474-503
  • View abstract

    Summary

    William Fulbecke, in 1600, divided law books into four categories, one of them was the undigested primary sources of the law: that is, the ever growing body of acts of Parliament and reports of cases. This chapter focuses on English law book and history of the arrangements for law printing from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of William III. Control of legal publishing was exercised both through the law printers' monopolistic rights, granted by letters patent (to Richard Tottell and John More), and the nascent concept of intellectual property which developed alongside them, and through a judicial licensing system. The chapter explores the workings of law publishing by looking at two projects: one concerned with statutes (Pulton's Statutes, 1618) and the other with case-law (the great yearbook project, 1671-80), for which background information has by chance survived.
  • 23 - ABCs, almanacs, ballads, chapbooks, popular piety and textbooks
    pp 504-513
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Works designed and priced for a broad public which included but was not exclusively composed of the poorer and less well-educated and works printed for the education of the young were produced in very large numbers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The basic printed aids to literacy included the hornbook, the ABC with the catechism, and the primer; typical ABCs included the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. Some school books were part of the privileged monopoly of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which themselves often granted rights of publication to the Company in return for money payments. During the seventeenth century, almanacs were published for distinctive occupational groups, first mariners and seafarers, later lawyers, clergy, farriers, chapmen and constables. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ballads had a far wider range of references than chapbooks. Tessa Watt has provided a survey of all forms of cheap print in relation to popular piety for the period 1550 to 1640.
  • 24 - Books for daily life: household, husbandry, behaviour
    pp 514-532
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Many books published throughout the period are concerned with daily life. Books on household work and husbandry were often small format and appear to have been cheaply produced; more carefully printed were those relating to personal behaviour. This chapter deals with the books produced in England covering the subject areas of household, husbandry and behavior, during two time periods: 1557-1640 and 1640-1695. The content of books referring to daily life (work inside the house and work outside the house) remains fairly constant but their publishing history is marked by a gap of nearly all new work in English between 1617 and 1650. Books relating to personal behaviour and family relationships have a continuous publishing history. While ordinary people needed books to help them pick up a trade or skill, the urban gentry needed books in order to find out what things were necessary for appropriate behaviour and display of position.
  • 25 - The creation of the periodical press 1620–1695
    pp 533-550
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The British periodical press developed slowly and faltered under early official controls, but flourished when political conflict created opportunities for journalists and publishers. The output of the news press grew and stabilized during the years of active warfare. By 1645 the news press included only half the number of titles of 1642 but double the number of issues published. The periodical press had reached a remarkable state of development by 1649, eight years after the first domestic newsbook appeared. Fifty-four different periodicals were published in that year, with a mix of short-running and long-running, bland and controversial, licensed and clandestine series, and a surprising diversity of subject matter. If the periodical press of 1695 displayed more discretion than valour, it had produced the essential elements that eighteenth-century publishers and journalists would wield more courageously. The business of news, information and entertainment was firmly established.
  • 26 - Printing and publishing 1557–1700: constraints on the London book trades
    pp 553-567
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In London by the middle of the sixteenth century, the structure of labour in the book trades already had a long history. There is good evidence that in one form or another a mystery of stationers responsible for the commercial production of manuscripts had been formally constituted as a brotherhood by 1403. It is worth stressing that the labour records of the printing and bookselling trades from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century probably represent the fullest account by far of any workforce in early modern England. A book printed for the author might run to 100 copies, probably the minimum for which it was worth going to a printer as distinct from a scribe. The effects of the Licensing Acts are only partly reflected in the imprimaturs and entries in the Stationersʾ Register. Only fifty-two books bear some form of licence.
  • 27 - The economic context
    pp 568-582
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Many structural features of the early modern economy governed the working practices of the book trade. Diversity and interconnectedness marked the broader economic structure of publication and bookselling, of capitalization, productive capacity, of supplies of paper and other materials, of demand, of distribution and of trade regulation. The structure of the British book trades changed rapidly from about 1550 to 1650. The balance between different traders and craftsmen shifted as wholesale businesses with onward-selling networks expanded in the late sixteenth century and even more markedly during the seventeenth century. For the majority of metropolitan booksellers, the sales of open market publications became the basis for survival. Cambridge and Oxford were amongst the most prominent, but York, Norwich, Exeter and Bristol, as well as Ipswich, Newcastle and several other towns are identified as established book-trading centres by the beginning of the seventeenth century.
  • 28 - French paper in English books
    pp 583-601
  • View abstract

    Summary

    A growing demand for printing paper and other economic incentives stimulated domestic production, but political measures were needed to protect it. French mills dominated the English market, supplying far more than Italy, Germany, Holland, and the other exporting countries combined. Printers consumed so much French paper that they could name different types by the place of origin, like varieties of cheese. Authors and publishers were given the right to import large amounts of high-priced duty-free paper, which they could sell on the side to subsidize expensive publications. Beset by tariffs and embargoes, French merchants could no longer compete in the British market against imports from other countries and the products of British mills, by then steadily improving in quality. British papermakers competed against the import trade most successfully at the lower end of the market, where they could sell cheap printing papers at a satisfactory profit.
  • 29 - The old English letter foundries
    pp 602-619
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The existence of independent ?fondeurs de lettres? is recorded in Lyon in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the second half, there were several substantial independent foundries, among them that of François Guyot at Antwerp, Hendrik van den Keere's at Ghent, the Egenolff business at Frankfurt, managed by Jacob Sabon, and the Parisian foundry of three successive Guillaume Le Bés, that had grown to become substantial businesses, with several employees and a stock of matrices for use or sale, dependent on a nuclear collection of punches. Engraving letters on the tip of a narrow cylinder of steel required special tools and the skill to render letters, singly or compound, with a family resemblance to each other, usually in a small size. Originally based on handwriting, printing types came to develop their own characteristics, conventions for roman and italic and the different kinds of black letter, commonly used.
  • 30 - Bookbinding
    pp 620-631
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The increase in book production and growing demand spurred the binders on. Sewing on single thongs and on single cords took less time than the more elaborate sewing structures that were the norm for medieval bindings. Economies, such as the use of fewer sewing supports, sewing more than one section at a time and sewing on recessed or sawn-in supports, emerge and become widely used towards the end of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century. Tooling in blind, either with rolls, fillets, small hand tools or with larger corner and centre blocks carried on throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. Pronounced corner and centre blocks were used to produce heavier designs found both on plainer and on more luxurious bindings. Textiles and embroidery played an important role in the covering and decoration of books during the Tudor and Stuart periods.
  • 31 - Mise-en-page, illustration, expressive form
    pp 632-662
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The study of the printed page as expressive form is a relatively recent development. This chapter provides a list of case studies, which demonstrates how the details of physical form, from whole book to individual page, resonate with larger social, intellectual and political issues. Some of the case studies described in the chapter include rhetoric of paratext in early printed books, typography of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Polyglot Bible. All aspects of the text's physical form are capable of constituting meaning. The arrangement of illustration and text on the page has particularly engaged the attention of scholars of emblem books. The meaning of the early modern text inheres in its typographic expression, the layout of the page and the choice of type, which can be examined not only for its embodiment of textual structure and content but also for its embodiment of orality.
  • 32 - The English provinces
    pp 665-686
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The relationship between the London book trade and the provinces was for most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conditioned by the power of members of the London Stationers' trade in controlling printing and distribution. The main role of the provincial book trade in England and Wales from 1557 to 1695 was the distribution of vernacular books printed and published in London and the sale of school books in Latin, printed either in London or abroad. The importation of Bibles and psalms printed more cheaply abroad was a long-standing problem for the London Company. The London trade has preoccupied most historical accounts of the press in England from 1557 to 1695. Together with the emergent trade with the American colonies, the establishment of clear and increasingly reciprocal distribution networks throughout the English provinces in these years.
  • 33 - Scotland
    pp 687-700
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Protestantism played its part in the growth of the market for Scots printed vernacular texts. In law Protestantism replaced Roman Catholicism, and the Scottish abbeys were gradually dissolved. At the end of the seventeenth century the most successful Scottish book trade dynasty was that founded by George Anderson, who seems to have started printing in Edinburgh in 1637. The emphasis of book historians on the development of printing has tended to obscure the fact that bookselling, rather than book production, was the motive force in the expansion of the trade in Scotland, where the small domestic press was unable to satisfy the demand for books. Scotland has been well served by studies of Renaissance libraries, though the concentration has been largely on collections in Edinburgh or with Edinburgh associations. The Advocates' Library, created in Edinburgh in 1682, marks the high point of seventeenth-century Scottish collecting.
  • 34 - The book in Ireland from the Tudor re-conquest to the battle of the Boyne
    pp 701-718
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Sixteenth century Ireland became a kingdom under Henry VIII as part of a renewed attempt to bring Ireland under more complete and extensive British governance. The printed book was one of the major instruments in the furtherance of the Reformation: people were encouraged to read the Bible for themselves and there flowed from the new presses all over Protestant Europe works of theology, philosophy, and biblical exegesis. The writings and activities of James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, offer an insight into the frame of mind that was predominant in Anglo-Ireland during and following the Tudor re-conquest. In Ireland and elsewhere manuscript tradition survived into the seventeenth century and beyond. Although the Tudor re-conquest and its devastating conclusion in the Battle of Kinsale and the Flight of the Earls meant the beginning of the end of the Gaelic order, native learning nevertheless persisted on a number of fronts.
  • 35 - Wales
    pp 719-734
  • View abstract

    Summary

    A commercial trade in Welsh books required a certain level of literacy in Welsh. Between 1540 and 1642 some 2,200 Welsh students were registered at Oxford and Cambridge, well over four-fifths of them at Oxford. The sense of crisis was intensified by the rapid decline of the bardic order, the traditional custodian of the Welsh language and traditions. Despite the poverty, underdevelopment, and relative isolation of Wales, Welsh was the only Celtic language to respond positively to the challenge of print, roughly two hundred Welsh-language titles appearing during the first century and a half of Welsh-language printing. The main difference between Wales and the other Celtic-speaking areas was that Welsh became the language of public worship. As literacy in Welsh became more widespread, monoglot Welsh-speakers made ever-increasing use of the printed word, a development which culminated in the flourishing vernacular press of the mid-nineteenth century.
  • 36 - British books abroad: the Continent
    pp 735-743
  • View abstract

    Summary

    From an international perspective, the slow and problematic development of the book trade in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had serious consequences. Due to the relatively high prices of books produced in Britain the export of scholarly and scientific books to the European Continent was minimal. The high prices of British books had a damaging effect. The growing interest on the Continent in British authors, particularly theological and scientific writers, encouraged foreign printers to reap the benefits of publication themselves, either by pirating these texts or having them translated into other languages. In spite of its negative connotations, book piracy, a common phenomenon in the European book trade, served as a useful corrective of poor distribution and excessive prices. The location and denomination of the Continental printing presses producing English religious texts depended on the changing religious and political situations in Britain and on the Continent.
  • 37 - British books abroad: the American colonies
    pp 744-752
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The historians of seventeenth-century book culture in the British colonies have traditionally focused on the advent of printing and on the private libraries of a few distinguished bookmen: the Winthrops, the Mathers, Elder Brewster, John Harvard, Isaac Norris and William Byrd, among others. The low incidence of American imprints in colonial inventories is noteworthy and probably reflects both their negligible value and the limited purposes for which they were printed. European printing occupied the commercial sector of the market; colonial printing was subsidized, official and of small commercial value. Before the establishment of printing in Boston, in 1675, the distribution of native printing was virtually monopolized by Hezekiah Usher and his son John, general merchants who incidentally dealt in books and stationery. The Ushers were certainly selling British books before 1675, on exactly the same lines as English provincial booksellers.
  • 38 - The stationers and the printing acts at the end of the seventeenth century
    pp 755-776
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The immediate context of the Press Act was the wide-ranging legislative programme undertaken during the first session of the Cavalier Parliament from 8 May 1661 to 19 May 1662, a programme which a recent historian of that Parliament has characterized as 'the reconstruction of the old regime'. The three main concerns of the Act were with what may be called licensing, trade restrictions, and printing rights, which together represent the interests of the government and the Stationers' Company. The licensing provisions of the Printing Act were complex in practice, but simple in principle. There were long lists of specified licensers for various categories of books and elaborate rules on the number of manuscripts to be submitted. The Stationers' 'monopoly' was in fact the thing which most troubled opponents of the Act, though they were concerned, not so much with the Company's near-monopoly control over the working members of the trade.

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