University of Virginia Library

4. Conclusions

The snapshot of mid-Jacobean printing and publishing revealed above
is just that—a single frame extracted from the larger movie that is early
modern London. Within the five-year period of this study certain general

observations emerge: the most productive printing houses maintained their
high levels of activity either through the acquisition of protected titles or by
aggressively pursuing work as trade printers; religious works constituted the
single most important area of publishing, and a large number of stationers
were involved in producing the non-protected segment of the field, especially
sermons and books of religious devotion and instruction; literary and informational
titles were also an important segment of non-protected printing,
with perhaps two-thirds of the stationers we can identify as publishers involved
with this trade; other areas, such as history and works of religious
commentary and controversy attracted relatively few stationers interested in
publishing; different subjects bring with them certain expectations regarding
format, especially volumes of history, law, and works of religious commentary
and controversy.

The snapshot also prompts many questions. How does the Stansby house
compare with other large printing offices from different periods? How did
the King's Printing House change over time? What do the shifts in the kind
and number of books being published tell us about the dynamics of early
modern English culture? How do various stationers from different times
negotiate the business continuum between trade-printing and self-publishing?
How does the role of the printer within the trade change over the decades?
In what ways do influential booksellers like Thomas Adams, Henry Fetherstone,
and Thomas Man resemble or differ from earlier booksellers such as
William Bonham, Richard Grafton, John Rastell, and Richard Tottell?
Such questions require further context; thus the next step in exploring the
London book trade through quantitative analysis should involve expanding
the chronological as well as evidentiary scope of the data collection. In practical
terms this means adding typographical data (composition totals as well
as face and body choices), design characteristics (headline structure, the
presence of ruled compartments and marginal notes) and paratextual evidence
(dedications, epistles, errata). As well some of the editorial features of
the STC (inherited by the ESTC) need to be addressed, the most important
being the decision by the original editors to blur the distinction between
edition, state, issue, and variant. Some method of representing shared printing
and publishing is needed, perhaps a standard authority table[69] through
which we can cross-reference printer, publisher, and a numeric estimate of
their proportional responsibility for each item. Finally this evidence must be
compiled for the entire STC period.

One hundred years and more have passed since the British Museum
published its General Catalogue of Printed Books, and in that time a number
of union and short-title catalogues, biographical dictionaries, and documentary

transcription surrounding early printing and publishing have emerged.
More recently projects such as the ESTC and EEBO as well as institutional
OPACs have begun creating digital resources available across computer networks.
I hope the preceding essay has demonstrated how these diverse materials
can be synthesized in ways that reveal new insights into book history
while avoiding most of the obvious phantoms, chimeras, and mirages of
statistical misapplication and misinterpretation.