A History of British Publishing

John Feather

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134415410
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Thoroughly revised, restructured and updated, A History of British Publishing covers six centuries of publishing in Britain from before the invention of the printing press, to the electronic era of today.

John Feather places Britain and her industries in an international marketplace and examines just how 'British', British publishing really is. Considering not only the publishing industry itself, but also the areas affecting, and affected by it, Feather traces the history of publishing books in Britain and examines:

• education
• politics
• technology
• law
• religion
• custom
• class
• finance, production and distribution
• the onslaught of global corporations.

Specifically designed for publishing and book history courses, this is the only book to give an overall history of British publishing, and will be an invaluable resource for all students of this fascinating subject.

Part I: THE EARLY MODERN BOOK TRADE

1: LITERACY, PRINT AND CULTURE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

Introduction

In the second quarter of the fifteenth century, when the German goldsmith Johann Gutenberg was beginning the experiments which were to lead to the invention of typographic printing, the form of the book which he knew was already sixteen hundred years old. The codex, the folded sheets held together in a binding with which we are familiar, had gradually displaced the scroll between the first century BCE and the third century CE, until it had become the only form in which texts were normally copied. The trade in manuscripts was even older than the codex. There seems to have been a commercial book trade in ancient Athens; the existence of the trade is well authenticated in Rome. Scribes working for booksellers made copies of texts for individual customers or for authors to distribute to their friends, or even speculatively for the booksellers to offer for sale. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the west at the beginning of the fifth century CE, the copying of manuscripts retreated into the monasteries, and it was not until the twelfth century that it emerged again into the sphere of commerce. This crucial development took place in Paris, and thereafter commercial book production developed in most of the major cities of the west (Roberts and Skeat 1983; Kenyon 1932: 82–3; de Hamel 1984).

In England there was a commercial book trade by the fourteenth century. More than seventy years before printing was introduced into the country, by William Caxton in 1476, this trade was sufficiently highly developed for the scribes who wrote the manuscripts to have formed their own guild in London. The scribes were sometimes employed by wealthy individuals who wanted a copy of a particular text, but they also worked for the stationers who by the middle of the fourteenth century were acting as intermediaries between the scribes and the book buyers. The stationers were the publishers of the late Middle Ages. They co-ordinated the work of all the craftsmen who were involved in the production of manuscript books: the scribe, the illuminator, the bookbinder. They were also the suppliers of the paper or vellum on which the book was written (Christianson 1999: 128–35). Literary manuscripts were copied in considerable quantities and often to a high standard by commercial scribes. There is even evidence for a particular scribe being associated with a living author, and working under his direction as his ‘publisher’, preparing a number of copies of a new work for circulation to patrons and friends (Edwards 1983: 17–19). Moreover, the crafts of book production were not confined to London. There were commercial stationers working for the universities in Oxford and Cambridge (Pollard 1979), and there is evidence for a book trade in York and other cities before the invention of printing, as well as flourishing monastic scriptoria. Even at that early date, however, there is a suggestion that for manuscripts of the highest quality the bibliophile would turn to the London book producers (Turville-Petre 1983).

Late medieval England was certainly not a bookless society. The ownership of books was not uncommon among the richer classes, both clerical and lay; the evidence for it is abundant in inventories, wills, catalogues and incidental references (Goldberg 1994; Humphreys 1967; Moran 1985: 185–220). By the middle of the fifteenth century, ownership of both religious and secular books was noticeably increasing among the laity (Fischer 2003: 168–70). There were libraries and other collections of books in universities, collegiate foundations and monastic houses, and from the reign of Edward IV (1461–83) there was a formally organised Royal Library based on royal collections that were already at least a century old (Backhouse 1999; Bell 1999; Stratford 1999). Books were undoubtedly expensive (Bell 1936–7), but they were available and in limited circles of society they were familiar.

Education, literacy and reading

The market for books is essentially determined by two factors: the number of those able to read and who wish to do so, and their ability to obtain reading matter. The commercial book trade, of which publishing is a part, depends on both. It is not, however, essential that all readers can afford to buy the books they want. Access to libraries may satisfy their needs, in which case it is the library which becomes the customer rather than the reader. Literacy is, however, fundamental. Although the inability to read does not wholly exclude an individual from the world of the book, since the fifteenth century it has increasingly had that effect. In late medieval England it was still not uncommon for ‘reading’ to mean ‘recitation’, that is the practice of reading aloud to a group of people. Silent reading was first practised in the monastic houses and the universities, and became the norm for private study from the thirteenth century onwards. Indeed it has been argued that it was the development of silent reading which made it possible to have communal collections of books to be read in situ, that is, in libraries. In secular society, however, recitation continued to be common until at least the middle of the fourteenth century, and perhaps later (Fischer 2003: 166–7; Saenger 1997: 256–76).

Once recitation had largely disappeared, the illiterate were in danger of not being able to access the contents of books. But in this, as in other matters, we should not overestimate either the speed or the suddenness of change. Orality remained a common form of public instruction. The lecture and the sermon are obvious examples. Recitation in the family circle remained a common leisure activity among the upper and middle classes until the nineteenth century. Perhaps more importantly, public reading and recitation continued to give the illiterate some access to the printed word. The sellers of printed ballads, for example, sang their wares at fairs and markets throughout the country for centuries to come. Their main purpose was to sell the printed text, but it had the effect of making that text available orally to those who could not read or afford it (Watt 1991: 23–5). Access to literate culture without mastering the art of reading may have been tenuous, but it was never impossible; well into the nineteenth century, there is evidence for a literate person with illiterate relatives, friends or colleagues reading to them from newspapers and books.

Literacy among laypeople should not, however, be understood as simply a recreational tool. By the fourteenth century, and arguably earlier, it was for many people becoming a necessity. Written documents were fundamental to the ownership of property and goods, and to their transfer from one person to another whether by sale, gift or inheritance. Public business was also dependent on written documents and records. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was necessary to be able to read – although perhaps rather less necessary to be able to write – for anyone who owned property, ran a business or had recourse to the law. Written documents were regarded as authoritative; they gradually displaced the reliance on human memory whether individual or collective. Even in the law, where oral evidence continued (and continues) to be of vital importance, written records of the law itself and of judicial decisions, and of course documentary evidence to be presented to the court, was critical to the whole process. Late medieval England was far from being a wholly literate society, but it was a society in which literacy conferred social and economic advantages and was essential to the transaction of complex business. The pleasure to be derived from reading was almost coincidental to this central fact (Clanchy 1979).

The actual extent of literacy in late medieval and early modern England is still a matter of debate among historians. A recent analysis concludes that by the middle of the sixteenth century perhaps half the adult population of England could read English to some extent, following a period of significant growth in the literacy rate (Trapp 1999: 39–40), although other scholars would take this to be a distinctly optimistic overestimate. By the second half of the sixteenth century, there are records from which inductions can be made about the extent of literacy, although the methodology is still somewhat contentious. Nevertheless, it seems reasonably safe to conclude that up to 60 per cent (and rising) of tradesmen and craftsmen in London and the south-east of England were literate, although in remoter parts of the country this proportion fell quite dramatically lower: 40 per cent in East Anglia, 30 per cent in Devon and Cornwall, perhaps less than 20 per cent in the north-east of England. Female illiteracy among the general population was in excess of 90 per cent. In the countryside, literacy rates did not rise to 50 per cent until well into the seventeenth century, and even then the evidence is ambiguous (Cressy 1980: 42–61; 142–74). In general terms, however, there are some conclusions which seem to be broadly valid: literacy was more common in the towns than it was in the countryside; men were much more likely to be literate than women; literacy was common among urban tradesmen; it was normal for the upper classes (both men and women) and among the clergy.

All of this raises questions about the acquisition of literacy. Among the aristocracy and the wealthier landed gentry, education was normally based in the home. It was undertaken by a domestic chaplain, or perhaps the local priest; even after the Reformation this remained a common practice, although employing a lay school master or governess gradually displaced the practice of employing a clergyman. Few if any girls went to any kind of public school. Boys, however, did. Schools proliferated in late medieval England. Some were associated with monastic foundations and other ecclesiastical bodies such as cathedrals and collegiate churches. Some were little more than adjuncts to parish churches. Some of these schools taught basic literacy; others were more advanced, meaning that they taught Latin. These were what were to become known as the ‘grammar’ schools. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many such schools were founded and endowed by laymen, typically for the benefit of the sons of local tradesmen. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were few towns in England which did not have such a school. For a few, grammar school led to one of the two English universities. These were the training grounds for England’s intellectual elite, and in particular the higher clergy who were influential in the state as well as the church. The state itself had no role in education. In short, by the middle of the fifteenth century, it was normal for a boy from a modestly prosperous urban home to obtain a basic education in English and possible for him to have access to a more advanced education (Orme 1973: 167–223; Orme 1989: 1–22).

The existence of a literate population underpins the existence of a commercial book trade. Literacy was, for the most part, acquired for utilitarian reasons: to conduct business, to transact correspondence and so on. But it was used for other reasons as well. There is ample evidence of leisure reading among the wealthy by the end of the fifteenth century, as well as evidence of aesthetic pleasure in books. Private individuals formed collections even before printed books became available; after that time, such collections proliferated, leaving evidence in the forms of thousands of books which can be shown to have been privately owned before the year 1557 (Ford 1999: 205–28). It was against this background that the printed book made its first appearance in England, and the trade in books was gradually transformed.

The printed book

The first printed book, an edition of the Bible in Latin, was produced by Gutenberg at Mainz in Germany in about 1454–5. The production technique was radically innovative, but in almost every other respect it was a profoundly traditional object. The appearance of the page was essentially the same as that of a manuscript. The type was copied from contemporary handwriting styles, complete with the diacritical marks and the multitude of abbreviations which were common in formal writing of Latin. The codex form itself was retained, and with it the binding. Of all those involved in manuscript production it was the bookbinders who suffered least from the new invention and the scribes who suffered most. In fact, some skills were in greater demand than ever before because of the vast increase in the number of books which were being produced. In the transitional period between manuscript and print, we find the work of the same binders and illuminators on both manuscripts and printed books. The increase in the number of books forced the binders into developing cheaper and simpler forms of binding (Pollard 1956; Nixon 1975/6), while illuminators soon fell victim to the economics of uniformity.

At first, booksellers, readers and librarians did not really distinguish between printed and handwritten books. The texts which were put into print were those which were in greatest demand, the Bible, the Church fathers, biblical commentaries and the like (Goldschmidt 1943). They were acquired by the traditional buyers and owners of such books as convenient copies of texts which they needed (Doyle 1988). Printed books began to make their way into England from the middle of the 1460s, including some brought in by individual travellers (Armstrong 1979). Gradually, the number of imports increased, until by the end of the fifteenth century continental printed books were a major factor in the English book trade, far greater in numbers and of far greater commercial significance than the small number of domestically printed titles (Needham 1999). This was particularly true for those institutions and individuals looking for theological and scholarly texts which were rarely produced in pre-Reformation England but which proliferated on the continent (Roberts 1997). Indeed, an awareness of the significance of imported books must lie behind any analysis of the English book trade until at least the second half of the sixteenth century.

The reasons for the reliance on imports were both cultural and economic. England was part of a common western European culture essentially defined by the Catholic Church. Known to contemporaries as ‘Christendom’, western Europe was in some respects culturally unified around this common religious heritage and the Latin language through which it was expressed. Despite the development of vernacular languages, and their increasing use even in formal situations (such as the law courts and representative assemblies like the English parliament), Latin was in widespread use as a spoken as well as a written language. It was the language of public worship, and the normal language of instruction in the universities. It was the administrative as well as the theological and liturgical language of the Church. It was the language of diplomacy, which was, in any case, often undertaken by senior churchmen. It was, in short, the normal medium of complex intellectual communication between educated people. The universality of Latin made the task of the first printers both easier and more difficult. It was easier because they had a European rather than a merely local or regional market in which to sell their wares; it was more difficult because that was precisely what they had to do. While the scribes whom they gradually displaced wrote two or three books a year, an early printer might produce a title every month in fifty or more copies. Indeed, there was little point in print runs shorter than that. Printed books thus began to appear at the great fairs which were the entrepôts of international trade in late medieval Europe. A successful printer/publisher was generally one who had easy access to this continent-wide market of the educated elite (Febvre and Martin 1976: 216–39).

Printing developed most quickly in Germany, Italy and France, the three territories (only France could be called a state in anything like the modern sense in the fifteenth century) which had the most convenient access to the great north-south trade routes along the valleys of the Rhine and the Rhône and through the Alpine passes. It took more than twenty years for the art of printing to reach the periphery of Europe, a periphery in which England was firmly located. England in the 1470s was beginning to recover from a long period of foreign and domestic instability. The wars with France which had begun in the reign of Edward III (1327–77) had petered out with the loss of all but a handful of England’s French territories in 1453. Domestic unrest followed. The loss of France was the harbinger of a long period of rivalry between different branches of the royal house of Plantagenet, which had begun with the deposition and assassination of Richard II in 1399, and continued through the deposition and brief restoration of Henry VI (1422–61 and 1470–1). Edward IV restored order and began a process of administrative and political reform, but the poverty of the crown, the growing discontent of the merchant classes and the simmering jealousies of the aristocracy made his task at best very difficult. After Edward’s death, his younger brother was widely suspected of murdering his young successor, Edward V (1483), to claim the throne for himself as Richard III (1483–5). Richard’s reign came to an ignominious end when he was defeated in battle by his distant relative Henry Tudor who (tenuously) claimed the throne as Henry VII. His reign (1485–1509) was marked by the gradual restoration of the finances and the power of the English monarchy, and the establishment of a more peaceful, settled and prosperous society. It was against this turbulent background that the first English printers tried to make a living.

William Caxton (c. 1422–91) was directly involved in some of the political events of the mid-fifteenth century. He was an import-export merchant who seems to have been very successful in his trade. He came to the attention of the court of Edward IV and undertook a number of diplomatic missions to the court of the Duke of Burgundy, the king’s brother-in-law, which was based at Bruges in modern Belgium. Burgundy was a prosperous independent state, and one of England’s major foreign trading partners as a market for her primary exports, wool and woollen cloth. It was in this trade that Caxton was engaged. Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the English king’s sister, was a patron of the arts, including the arts of the book, especially binding and illumination. Under her patronage, Caxton was encouraged to translate some contemporary French romances into English, and then to master the art of printing in order to disseminate them in his own country. It seems more than likely that he saw this as a simple commercial opportunity. England’s need for scholarly and religious books, almost all of them in Latin, could easily be satisfied by importing them from the continent; indeed Caxton himself may well have been involved in this trade. But there was no source for the secular works which amused the leisure of the English upper classes: this was the gap which Caxton sought to fill (Corsten 1976/7; Hellinga 1999; Hellinga and Hellinga 1976/7; Nixon 1976; Painter 1976).

Caxton’s first book was his own translation of a French romance, Recueil des histoires de Troie, which he printed in 1474–5, under the title Recuyell of the histories of Troy, in either Louvain or Bruges. It was the first book to be printed in the English language. In that sense it marks the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the English book trade and what would later be the publishing industry.

Caxton printed four other books in the Netherlands, but in 1476 he returned to England to set up shop in the precincts of Westminster Abbey; he was to remain there until his death (Painter 1976: 82; Nixon 1976). He had brought home with him a supply of type, and probably some workmen including Wynkyn de Worde, who was to be his successor (Blake 1971; Blake 1972). The press itself may have been imported, or it may have been built locally to Caxton’s specifications; we do not know. We do know, however, that by 13 December 1476 he had produced the first surviving piece of printing done on English soil, an indulgence for which the English commissary was John Gant, Abbot of Abingdon (Pollard 1928–9). During the next fifteen years Caxton produced more than a hundred books and other items of which copies are known to be extant; it is more than likely that there were others which are now lost.

As the founding father of English printing (the ‘prototypographer’ as the Victorians loved to call him) Caxton is a major figure in the history of British publishing. On the other hand, he was far from being typical either of his immediate successors or of the printing trade in early modern England. First, Caxton was not a printer in the literal sense of operating a printing press; he was an employer of labour whose own function was as capitalist and salesman. In other words, he was primarily a publisher. By 1476 Caxton had behind him a solid record of commercial achievement. He was a wealthy man, well able to indulge his taste for literature. This does not mean that his press was a hobby. It was clearly intended as a commercial venture for which he carefully selected titles for their appeal to a small but well-defined market. Second, Caxton was not only a businessman but also a diplomat. When he returned to England it was the nobility of the court of Edward IV who provided both patrons and customers (Painter 1976: 59–71, 108–20). Although his Yorkist links caused him some difficulties after the accession of Henry VII, Caxton weathered that storm and his business continued to flourish. To appeal to this courtly audience, Caxton printed many volumes of the romances and poetry which were the dominant literary amusement at the courts of Edward IV and Richard III. Caxton’s book trade business was essentially medieval rather than modern, built as it was on royal and aristocratic patronage just like the businesses of contemporary scribes and producers of illuminated manuscripts. While his own approach may have been that of a businessman – and it would seem that it was – his customers must have seen him as being essentially a client.

Because he was patronised by the court, it was natural for Caxton to establish himself at Westminster, the seat of the court and of parliament. In addition to the vernacular works for which he is chiefly remembered, Caxton also published a number of liturgical books, devotional treatises and indulgences all of which would have been useful to the clerics who clustered around the Abbey in which his sho...