The History of Oxford University Press: Volume I

Abstract

Abstract This book is the first of three volumes covering the history of printing and publishing at the University of Oxford. This book starts from its tentative and obscure beginnings in the late fifteenth century, and then moves to the appointment of the Oxford bookseller Joseph Barnes as university printer in 1584, through a succession of university printers and the establishment of a university press in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and then to the crisis that led the University to take over the so-called Bible Press in 1780. It is a history of the books printed at Oxford, of the men (and very occasionally women) who printed, published, and sold them, and of the other individuals, many of them members of the University, whose activities and decisions shaped the development of printing and publishing at Oxford — most notably William Laud, John Fell, and William Blackstone. This first volume explores the range of works produced by the university printers that later became a university press, paying specific attention to works of natural philosophy, divinity, history, literature, music, law, and medicine as well as works in modern, oriental, and classical languages. It also considers works printed for the University itself, and the activities of the Bible Press which printed bibles and other ‘privileged’ works. Finally, the volume traces the growing influence of the university press on the city of Oxford, and its place in the national and international book trade.