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  • 26 - Printing and publishing 1557–1700: constraints on the London book trades

  • from THE BUSINESS OF PRINT AND THE SPACE OF READING
  • Edited by John Barnard, University of Leeds, D. F. McKenzie, University of Oxford
  • With Maureen Bell, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 November 2002, pp 553-567

  • 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.