The Oxford University Press : An Informal History

Clarendon Press, Oxford, first edition, 1978. Cloth, 8vo, 24 cm,. xxviii, 303 pp, [12] leaves of plates, ills. From the blurb: "This history of the O.U.P. is published in the year in which the Press celebrates 500 years of printing in Oxford. Great names in the early history of the Press, like Laud, Fell, and Blackstone, laid sound foundations, but as late as 1870 it was thought necessary to remind the Delegates that publishing books was not 'entirely beside their function': as late as the 1890s there were still those prepared to censure the University for allowing its Press to publish the secular and profane literature of Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. The transformation of the Press from a lucrative Bible house into a great national and international publishing business was rapid. Progress may have appeared at first to be stumbling and sporadic, but this book, despite its episodic approach and its concentration on a few outstanding individuals, is essentially a study of continuity. Like any ancient institution that has survived, the Press has done so through the permanent pursuit of an impossible goal, modernity. The process of modernization continues, but given the curious agglomeration of businesses, the anomalous consequences of organic growth, and historical accident over 500 years, it is likely to remain, like the men who in the past governed its destiny, 'really very odd'. Very Good in Near Very Good dustwrapper.