University of Virginia Library

A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LONDON
BOOK TRADE 1614-1618

by
David L. Gants[1]

AS STUDENTS OF THE BOOK have borrowed tools of the historian in their
attempts to gain insights into the world of early printing and publishing,
they have also faced the limits inherent in such instruments.[2] In particular,
the methods of quantitative history, often called cliometrics, offer many
analytical advantages, derived in part from the broad perspective that large
population samples afford and in part from the numerous descriptive and
inferential tools available. For the unwary these tools are also accompanied
by the potential traps of unreliable data, anachronistic modeling, and statistical
misapplication. Nonetheless, a number of admirable studies in the
area of the early modern English book trade have demonstrated what can be
gained through a thoughtful application of quantitative approaches.[3]

The following essay attempts to navigate the shoals of cliometrics and
offer a contextual frame within which we might begin asking questions about
the relationships among stationers in mid-Jacobean London. Focusing on
the book trade from 1614 through 1618, a period when the city enjoyed relative
peace and prosperity, it will analyze the interplay of production capacity
and bookseller preference with the genre and format of the books published.
It will, insofar as possible, try to tease out from title pages and secondary

documents an outline of business relations among printers, publishers, wholesalers,
and retailers active during a specific moment in the trade. From a
larger perspective, this study also serves as a test case for the Early English
Booktrade Database project, an enterprise whose central goal is the creation
of a bibliographical augmentation to the English Short-Title Catalogue.[4]
The lessons learned while collecting and interrogating this small sampling
of data will subsequently be applied to the entire STC period.[5]

Two matters need to be addressed briefly before I discuss the results of
my analysis. First, I have employed the edition sheet as the base unit for
measuring printing-house output. Bibliographers have employed this term
for different concepts, but I take it to mean the number of sheets in an
exemplar volume used as a measure of the relative amount of work required
to produce the complete run of that volume. For example, a 32-page quarto
that collates A-D4 contains four edition sheets, while a 32-page octavo that
collates A-B8 contains two edition sheets. Although both volumes have the
same number of pages, the quarto contains twice as many sheets and would
require roughly twice as much work to machine as the octavo. The second
issue revolves around the generic classifications I have used to evaluate printing
and publishing activity. The utility of ongoing research increases when
pursued with an awareness of its predecessors in the field, and so I have
broken down the books published during the target period into categories
used in recent studies. A more detailed discussion of these issues can be
found at the Early English Booktrade Database Web site.

1. Book Production in Mid-Jacobean London[6]

During the five-year period 1614-1618, London stationers produced an
average of 7616 edition sheets and 356 distinct editions each year,[7] and the

size of a typical book was slightly less than twenty-two edition sheets (see
table 1). A little over half of that output was religious material, with 15%

Table 1. London printing, 1614-1618

             

Year	Edition sheets	Editions[8]	Edition sheets/Edition
1614	7932	326	24.3
1615	8156	412	19.8
1616	7095	379	18.7
1617	7240	320	22.6
1618	7653	341	22.4
Average	7616	356	21.4

works of literature, 12% informational texts, 11% law and politics, 7%
history, and the remaining 2% ephemera and official documents (see table 2).
Of the religious materials, about two-thirds of the output consisted of devotional
or instructional volumes, learned commentary, controversial tracts,
and other such works, with 20% devoted to biblical texts, 14% to sermons,
and 4% to copies of the Book of Common Prayer (see table 3). It is useful to
recall at this point that these figures describe only the output of London
printers and do not reflect the larger bookselling market for which they
labored. For example, manuscripts still played an important role in the
production and circulation of certain types of works. Furthermore, London
presses produced mainly English-language volumes, while stationers imported
large numbers of Greek and Latin works from the continent that they
then retailed through bookstalls and to a broad clientele of aristocrats and
intellectuals.[9] Mark Bland estimates that "80 per cent of the books that survive
from the libraries of Ben Jonson and John Donne . . . were printed on
the Continent" (450), and Sir Edward Stanhope's book bequest to Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1608 contained nearly 93% continental imprints.[10]
Each of these collections reflects its owner's interests; less scholarly personal
libraries contain more native printing, as is illustrated by an inventory of
Sir Roger Townsend's books around 1625 in which 60% of the titles are
English-language works printed in Britain.[11]

While the overall book trade increased, internal Company restrictions and
periodic Star Chamber decrees meant the number of master printers active in
London during the first forty years of the seventeenth century hovered around
twenty, and with a few exceptions those licensed printers were limited to
only one or two presses. Many London printers owned more than two presses
but used them for proofing and other purposes, interpreting the decrees to
mean one or two production presses. Compare this situation with that of
Christophe Plantin of Antwerp, who in the early 1570s had up to sixteen
active presses and employed in the neighborhood of fifty workers,[12] an order
issued by the Provost of Paris in 1618 decreeing that each master printer
have at least two working presses,[13] or with a 1644 Parisian inventory indicating
that one printing house had seven presses, five had five presses, eight
had four, eleven had three, thirty-five had two, and sixteen had one press.[14]
The reasons for this apparent imbalance are various—the lack of a significant
domestic supply of paper (the English wore mainly wool and thus lacked a
ready source of the linen rags from which paper was made), the minuscule
continental market for English-language books, the inability to achieve economies
of scale that continental printers enjoyed, the dominance of French
printing during the sixteenth century, and the obvious fact that Paris was
nearly twice as large as London and the population of France three times as
large as England—but the important point to bear in mind is that the London
printing trade was a relatively small industry serving a subset of a larger
market.

Although the domestic printing trade may have remained small relative to
the continental industry, it is clear that the overall circulation and sales of
books printed in England had been growing for some time. Veylit has compiled
figures for British publishing from 1475-1800, based upon individual
titles listed in the ESTC database. These indicate that the average number
of titles annually printed in the forty-year period between the death of Elizabeth
and the beginning of the English Civil War roughly doubled, from

about 250 per year to 500.[15] This expansion is part of a longer trend of steady
growth in common-press books that began when Caxton set up his office in
Westminster in 1475. Marjorie Plant has observed that "The prosperity of
any branch of economic activity is directly affected by the prevalence of war,
and this is surely nowhere more true than in the case of the book industry."[16]
Certainly the accession of Henry VII at the end of 100 years of civil strife and
the one and one-half centuries of relative domestic peace that followed played
a major role in the growth of the English market for books. Other larger factors
contributed as well: rising literacy, national population recovery from
the fourteenth-century plagues and accompanying economic development
(albeit usually slow and halting), the growing hegemony of London within
England, and a host of smaller influences all made for not just an expanding
market for books but also a diverse one.[17]

As far as the five-year period of this study is concerned, a number of localized
factors combined to make it an especially interesting one. Politically it
marked the center of James I's rule and the last years of an era of relative
calm that had begun with the Edict of Nantes in 1598 and peace with Spain
in 1604; by 1619 Ralegh had been executed, James's popularity at home had
evaporated, and turmoil in Bohemia had sparked the Thirty Years War.
England was experiencing sustained economic prosperity, marked by stable
prices, a series of good harvests, and a welcome lack of plague visitations.[18]
In 1616 the Stationers' Company renewed and enlarged its exclusive right to
print primers, Psalters, and almanacs, titles that formed the core of the
profitable English Stock. In the same year, an apparent optimistic moment,
the Company also struck a deal with Bonham Norton and formed the Latin
Stock, which was primarily concerned with importing books from the continent.
Two years later, in 1618, the Stationers formed the Irish Stock in a
bid to control the book trade in Ireland. Overall the middle years of James's
reign were marked by relative peace and prosperity, a business climate that
would have encouraged printers and publishers to produce at a fairly high
level.

The increasingly complex and active market is reflected in the varied
subjects of the works published, bought, and consumed in England. Different
genres of works brought with them assumptions about textual presentation,

and nowhere is this clearer than in the choice of format.[19] Full-sheet broadsides
were usually reserved for official proclamations or ballads, while the
smallest formats (16°-64°) were almost exclusively the domain of religious
publication. Overall, the bulk of the works from this period were printed
either in folio (36%) or quarto (41%) format, with 15% in octavo, 6% duodecimo,
and the remaining 2% in a collection of little-used formats (see
table 2).

Informational and literary publishing most closely mirrors the distribution
of formats seen in the overall trade, with slightly more quartos than
folios, and a significant percentage of octavo printing. Other genres show
much more striking preferences. Books of history, as well as works of law
and politics, are overwhelmingly printed in folio, a format perceived as carrying
a certain amount of weight and prestige, while religious works dominate
small-format publication. Ephemera were overwhelmingly published in
the more portable quarto and octavo formats, with official documents either
printed as full-sheet broadside proclamations or quarto pamphlets.

It is in the printing of religious materials that the greatest diversity of
formats is employed. Almost half of the religious works are imposed in a
quarto format, with a significant number of folio, octavo, and duodecimo
titles and a smattering of small-format printing. Two sub-categories of religious
publishing are worth touching on as well. Two-thirds of all sermons
are published in quarto format, although sermon compilations tend to appear
in octavo and duodecimo. The greatest range of format choices, however,
is in the printing of Bibles; there appears to have been a market for
Bibles, single-testament books and psalm translations in nearly every format
(see table 3).

Similar studies against which we might compare these data are hard to
come by and often detail the activities of a single house rather than the industry
as a whole. For example, Jan Materné's survey of the Officina Plantiniana's
practices during the Counter-Reformation shows that this Antwerp
enterprise favored smaller formats than did the London trade. The most
common format as measured by titles printed was octavo, followed by duodecimo,
quarto, 24mo, 32mo, and finally folio.[20] Counting titles, McKenzie
examined a trio of five-year periods in the sixteenth-century London trade
and revealed that religious works made up about half the total output and
that the most popular format was octavo (accounting for between fifty and
seventy percent of the total output in the late 1540s).[21] Yamada's study of
Creede's establishment 1593-1617 analyzed his output by genre and size but
not format, while Blayney's examination of Okes's house contains an appen-

Table 2. London printing by genre and format, 1614-1618 (in edition sheets)

                   

Genre	1°	2°	4°	8°	12°	16°	24°	32°	64°	Total	Proportion
Religion	4	5125	9475	3212	1799	125	85	28	5	19858	52%
Literature	12	2101	2360	1113	146	60	—	2	4	5798	15%
Information	7	1370	2073	813	126	—	—	—	—	4389	12%
Law/Politics	2	3095	710	470	32	—	—	—	—	4309	11%
History	—	2118	496	155	—	—	—	—	—	2769	7%
Ephemera	38	1	280	178	—	4	—	—	—	501	1%
Official Documents	232	59	148	8	5	—	—	—	—	452	1%
Total	295	13869	15542	5949	2108	189	85	30	9	38076
Proportion	1%	36%	41%	15%	6%	1%	—	—	—

Table 3. London religious printing by sub-genre and format, 1614-1618 (in edition sheets)

                       

Sub-Genre	1°	2°	4°	8°	12°	16°	24°	32°	64°	Total	Proportion
Commentary	—	2367	2165	298	26	—	—	—	—	4856	24%
Instructional	3	373	1678	810	529	—	—	—	—	3393	17%
Sermons	—	—	1930	732	66	3	—	—	—	2731	14%
Complete Bibles	—	934	1092	392	125	12	10	—	—	2565	13%
Controversial	—	765	1431	165	16	—	—	—	—	2377	12%
Devotional	1	—	436	320	997	32	—	2	—	1788	9%
Psalms	—	172	383	183	24	38	28	26	—	854	4%
Book of Common Prayer	—	268	360	41	16	—	15	—	3	703	4%
New Testament	—	246	—	271	—	40	32	—	2	591	3%
Total	4	5125	9475	3212	1799	125	85	28	5	19858
Proportion	—	26%	48%	16%	9%	1%	—	—	—

dix listing his production output 1604-1609 and including a bibliographical
description of each item but does not compile the data into a single chart. In
any case, a strong correlation between format and certain types of books
suggests presentational expectations among readers.

2. London Printing[22]

Because of regulations requiring the inclusion in imprints of the printer's
name, we can identify most of the establishments responsible for producing
extant works from mid-Jacobean London. Twenty-nine individuals or organizations
appear in title pages during this period as having in some way
been responsible for physically printing books (some of these businesses
worked cooperatively and their data have been combined; see footnotes for
individual printers in table 4). The most striking observation coming from
the figures below is the wide discrepancy in the levels of business activity; the
top six offices were responsible for over half of the total output and the bottom
six responsible for only 8% (see table 4).

These figures indicate that the most productive printing houses operating
in London achieved a sustained high volume one of two ways: by acquiring
a privilege to print protected materials, as is the case of the King's Printer,
Adam Islip, and to a lesser degree John Legat (who through established connections
with Cambridge had cornered a valuable share of a steady market);
or by cultivating a network of active publishers who could be relied upon to
provide work sufficient to keep an office busy, as with the printers William
Stansby, Edward Griffin, Thomas Snodham, Felix Kingston, and Humphrey
Lownes. McKerrow, in his examination of Edward Allde's career, distinguished
between two types of printers, "according as they themselves published
and sold the bulk of the work they printed—the so-called printerpublisher,
or printed mainly or entirely for others—the so-called trade
printers."[23] He did not differentiate between those who mainly printed
privileged material and those who primarily commissioned new titles, but
his central distinction is still a useful one, especially if one compares output
levels with the place a printer falls on the printer-publisher/trade printer
continuum. Indeed, the data suggest a strong correlation between the ability
of a printer to solicit commissions from other publishers and the production
totals posted by that printer.[24] Excluding the King's Printer, Islip, and Legat
from the population, the five most productive houses (which are responsible
for half the output of this group) printed only 6% of their production for
themselves, while the remaining dozen identified houses printed over one-

Table 4. London printing by output and format, 1614-1618

                                             

	Edition sheets	Selfpublished	Edition sheets/ Edition	Proportion
Printing House				1°	2°	4°	8°	12°	16°	24°	32°	64°
King's Printing House[25]	6069	na	20.9	3%	41%	36%	15%	3%	1%	1%	—	—
Adam Islip	3751	na	85.3	—	71%	19%	9%	1%	—	—	—	—
Edward Griffin[26]	3706	6%	28.5	—	25%	57%	13%	4%	1%	—	—	—
William Stansby	3581	3%	35.5	—	63%	28%	7%	2%	—	—	—	—
Thomas Snodham	2241	10%	17.0	—	16%	54%	21%	8%	1%	—	—	—
John Legat	1982	na	42.2	—	58%	29%	10%	3%	—	—	—	—
Felix Kingston	1829	4%	19.5	—	25%	49%	17%	9%	—	—	—	—
Humphrey Lownes[27]	1798	9%	25.0	—	23%	41%	24%	12%	—	—	—	—
John Beale[28]	1672	28%	18.8	—	43%	29%	18%	8%	1%	—	—	1%
Nicholas Okes	1585	30%	14.2	—	23%	34%	31%	12%	—	—	—	—
Richard Field	1551	23%	28.7	—	24%	51%	17%	6%	2%	—	—	—
Unattributed Printing[29]	1374	na	7.5	2%	10%	33%	29%	19%	3%	2%	2%	—
Alsop/Creede[30]	1258	39%	15.0	—	1%	75%	22%	2%	—	—	—	—
William/Isaac Jaggard[31]	1227	83%	27.9	—	52%	38%	6%	4%	—	—	—	—
George Purslowe[32]	1066	32%	14.0	—	—	73%	13%	14%	—	—	—	—
George Eld	980	30%	10.4	1%	45%	36%	17%	1%	—	—	—	—
Thomas Purfoot	636	30%	18.2	1%	28%	39%	25%	7%	—	—	—	—
Edward Allde	622	19%	10.9	—	—	78%	20%	2%	—	—	—	—
Blower/Jones/Snowdon[33]	465	51%	8.5	3%	12%	64%	16%	5%	—	—	—	—
Thomas Dawson[34]	430	8%	25.3	—	61%	27%	9%	3%	—	—	—	—
John/William White[35]	253	17%	5.6	5%	—	77%	18%	—	—	—	—	—

third of their output for themselves. If we isolate the output and selfpublication
data (see figure 1), an inverse relationship between the two
emerges—as a printing house increases its publishing activities it tends to
decrease its overall emphasis on production work.

FIGURE 1. London printing, 1614-1618: Printing house output vs. % self-published.

A recent monograph on printing house activities during this period can
shed further light on some of the data listed in table 4. Yamada's 1994 study
of Thomas Creede's establishment contains output and subject distribution
analyses for the house's history up to Creede's death in 1617 (including the
materials produced in partnership with Bernard Alsop in 1616). My examination

of this business's output from 1614 through 1618 indicates that Creede
and then Alsop relied more heavily on projects from outside publishers than
on self-financed books; they printed roughly two sheets for themselves for
every three sheets they printed for other stationers. However, Yamada's
analysis allows us to view this house's practices from a long-term perspective.
From 1593 through 1602, Creede "printed twice as many books for himself
as for others. In other words, he was a printer-bookseller" (McKerrow's
printer-publisher). For the next ten-year period of 1603-1612, nearly the
opposite was true. According to Yamada's figures, "the average ratio in this
period of the books for himself to those for others was about 3 to 5. This
reversed tendency remained unchanged until the end of his business. He
became a trade-printer."[36] Despite the shift in publishing strategy, the overall
productivity of the business didn't seem to have suffered; while the amount
of self-publishing dropped steadily from an average of 292 sheets per year in
1596-98 to an annual average of 74 during the three years immediately preceding
the arrival of Alsop, production rates declined much less, from 367
sheets per annum to a little over 250 (see figure 2).[37]

FIGURE 2. Yearly output for Creede and Alsop/Creede.

Before examining the much more diverse publishing segment of the London
book trade, I'd like to discuss briefly the printing side of the book trade,
beginning with one of the most important printers of his time. Born in Exeter,
William Stansby's twenty-six-year career as a master printer (1610-1636)
spans the core Jacobean-Caroline period, a time during which his output was
both prolific and catholic. When Stansby apprenticed with John Windet in

1589, most of the office's composition was done in pica type. Over the years
the printing house expanded its capacity by acquiring additional typographical
material (in 1589 and again in 1609 the establishment purchased large
amounts of english type, and around 1590 they acquired some of John
Wolfe's type and ornaments), so that by the time Stansby took over in 1610
he had quite a substantial amount of type at his disposal.[38] For example, in
the summer of 1616 he paused in the printing of the final quires of Ben
Jonson's Workes (STC 14751), leaving 18.5 formes of type standing idle while
he attended to other matters.[39] Allowing that amount of type to sit unused
would have seriously compromised many printing houses, but it had little
impact on Stansby's activities. This large collection of equipment gave him
the capacity to develop a business capable of concurrently printing both
large and small projects and the flexibility to tackle a wide range of books.
He also displayed an enormous amount of ambition. When Windet owned
the house his output averaged between 200 and 300 edition sheets per year.
Stansby doubled that amount within a year of succeeding to the mastership
and within five years nearly tripled it. Clearly the production rates of this
printing office were the result of industrial capacity married to individual
drive.

Stansby was responsible for roughly 9% of the total London output during
the period in question. That he could sustain production at this level
without the benefit of exclusive patents meant that, among other things, he
needed to develop relationships with the booksellers who served as publishers
at this time. The title pages of the slightly more than one hundred books he
printed from 1614 through 1618 bear the names of over thirty different booksellers,
and only 3% of his output was printed without the evident involvement
of another stationer. By contrast, Islip's title pages reveal only six
names (other than the Company of Stationers who managed the law patent)
on his handful of non-law publications, and only three of his title pages lack
publisher information. The Star Chamber decrees of 1586 and 1615 that restricted
the number of presses owned by individual printing houses in London
to either one or two (save the King's Printer, who was not subject to
these limits) were usually taken to apply only to the number of operating
presses. Nonetheless these decrees along with periodic Company raids and
crackdowns placed a tangible limit on the production capacity of each
office. For an ambitious businessman like Stansby (in the 1615 decree he was
allowed two presses), the only way to achieve his high levels of output was

by making maximum use of his equipment. A brief look at how he managed
his typographical resources under these circumstances, then, might provide
useful insights.

At the end of Windet's mastership, when the house was averaging less
than 300 edition sheets per annum and the generic mix tended toward smallformat
books of a religious nature, composition was roughly half black letter
and half roman, and "Pica was twice as commonly used as english . . . [with]
a significant use of long-primer, brevier and non pareil."[40] When Stansby
hit his stride in 1614-1618 and was averaging 700 sheets per annum, less than
10% of the composition was black letter, with over 50% of the work done in
english and only 42% in pica. He also tended toward publishing largeformat
books, with 62% of his output imposed as folio, 28% quarto, 7%
octavo and only 3% duodecimo.

Stansby seems to have made full use of his ample stocks of english type
for his extensive folio publication, supplementing it with pica only in two
instances—in 1614 when he was printing the 244-sheet Purchas his Pilgrimage
(STC 20506) and Walter Ralegh's 394-sheet History of the World (STC
20637), and again in 1617 when he printed an enlarged Purchas (294 sheets,
STC 20507) along with the second edition of the History (STC 20638).[41]
In both cases he chose to set Purchas in pica (he set Ralegh's History in
english), the only two times he employed that body for folio printing. When
setting quarto, though, the balance shifts to the other extreme: 80% of his
quarto output is in pica roman or black letter, with only 20% set in english.
What little small-format printing Stansby did was a smattering of brevier
and long and great primer. The rapid increase in production seems to have
forced a number of changes from the earlier practices of Windet's mastership,
including a focus on secular rather than religious publishing, "a shift
to larger sizes of type and increased emphasis on composition over presswork."[42]
Unlike that of most of his contemporaries, nearly all of Stansby's
work was the result of commissions from other stationers (discussed further
below), and he seems to have cultivated strong commercial relationships with
publishers who fed a growing market for works of literature and history.

Edward Griffin's career, while much shorter, resembles Stansby's in a
number of important ways.[43] Like Stansby he was not from London but
rather born in Denbigh, in northern Wales. After being freed in 1611 Griffin
worked as a journeyman in the establishment of his former master Arnold
Hatfield and succeeded to the business upon the latter's death the next year.
The printing house Griffin acquired is often referred to as the Eliot's Court

Press, a syndicate formed in 1584 from the printing materials of Henry Bynneman
and located in the Old Bailey. Hatfield was the last of the four founding
partners, and by the time he died Melchisidec Bradwood, who had joined
the partners in 1602, seems to have withdrawn completely to Eton. To help
with the firm, around 1613 Griffin may have contracted George Purslowe to
provide supplementary production, although the STC offers "It is not clear
whether [Purslowe] ever actually worked in the Old Bailey, or whether he
may have borrowed a few ornaments from the Eliot's Court Press, or only
contracted with the partners to share in printing some of their publications"
(3.139).

Upon assuming the Eliot's Court Press, Griffin seems to have hit the
ground running. He started off quite busy, averaging between 600 and 800
sheets a year during the first four years of his mastership, and he maintained
that level of production until his death in 1621. He also seems to have been
a fairly law-abiding colleague, was admitted to livery in 1616, and received
a one-half yeoman's share in the English Stock in 1618 and a full share the
next year. With the established printing business apparently came a long
list of client publishers; Griffin dealt with thirty-five different booksellers
during the year 1614-1618, especially Nathaniel Butter (1499 sheets), Ralph
Mab (500 sheets), William Bladen (226 sheets), and William Aspley (225
sheets). He printed many more titles of smaller size and format, with an
output totaling nearly 170 separate works of which three-quarters were
quarto format or smaller. Most of the publishers he dealt with had a preference
for divinity, and during this period they commissioned him to print
nearly 2700 edition sheets of religious titles, especially commentaries, works
of instruction, and collections of sermons. Both Stansby and Griffin relied
upon outside financing from prosperous stationers: Stansby maintained relations
with booksellers who favored secular works, and Griffin exploited his
connections with publishers specializing in religious texts.

Large establishments such as the King's Printer, Islip, Stansby, and Griffin
managed to attract the lion's share of the large-format and prestige printing,
yet there was still enough business in the London market to support midsized
outfits such as the one run by Thomas Snodham. Like Stansby and
Griffin, after Snodham was freed in 1602 he remained with, and ultimately
took over the business of, his former master Thomas East. He apparently
had no valuable patents, although he occasionally printed music as an
assignee of William Barley. During the last part of his career he served on
a committee of stock-keepers who oversaw the management of the English
Stock. In 1619 he also was asked by the Stationers' Company "to goe into
Ireland to take the account" of the Irish Stock. As recompense the Company
ordered that he "shall haue worke for 2 presses vntill his returne & that the
Company shall pay to his wife eu'ye saterday 4[pounds] if the worke amount
to so much."[44]

Snodham's output reflects the sorts of projects a mid-sized office could expect
to attract. A little more than half of his production consisted of the religious
material that was so popular at this time (about a quarter of this was
sermon publication). His work came from a number of different sources, with
the names of over thirty stationers appearing on the title pages of the books he
printed during this period and approximately 10% of his output produced
without an outside publisher. He may have worked for so many publishers
because the commissions they gave him were so small. Over the five-year
period of this study Snodham printed more than 130 separate titles with an
average of a little less than seventeen edition sheets per title, 25% smaller
than the average for the trade. As one might expect from such a collection
of smaller works, a majority (57%) of his work was in quarto, with roughly
18% in folio, 18% octavo, and 7% duodecimo. He also managed to keep a
fairly consistent rate of work in his house, with a solid schedule of smaller
quarto and octavo jobs punctuated on occasion with large folio contracts.[45]

The remaining printers from this period reflect in one way or another the
characteristics displayed by the largest establishments. Felix Kingston and
Humphrey Lownes, both in the middle of successful careers, relied upon
other booksellers for their financing and produced a slate of titles resembling
that of Griffin (Kingston succeeded to the business of his father the printer
John Kingston, a former apprentice of Richard Grafton; Lownes also collaborated
frequently with his brother Matthew and married the daughter of
the wealthy bookseller Thomas Man). Among the mid-sized houses that
published for themselves as well as printed for others, the typical annual
output consisted of much smaller volumes than that of printers who worked
primarily for others. Younger stationers such as John Beale, Nicholas Okes,
and George Purslowe printed small format works of divinity and literature
for numerous booksellers: Beale's title pages include thirty-three different
publishers, Okes's forty-three, and Purslowe's twenty-nine. These printers
also received various Company subsidies to help them, with Beale commissioned
to print Thomas Ashe's 486-sheet common law reference Le Primier
Volume del Promptuarie (STC 840.5) and both Okes and Purslowe receiving
sums from the Company Loan Book.[46] The older printers dominate the bottom
of table 4, indicating that either they had reached the point where their
own more profitable publishing and bookselling ventures replaced printing,
were nearing the end of their careers and withdrawing from the trade, or
were flirting with failure (William White, for example, received £4 in 1611
from the Company Poor Book[47] ).

3. London Publishing

McKenzie has observed that "There is still no satisfactory model of the
economics of the London trade which usefully structures the dense and
complex relationship between writers, printers, booksellers and readers during
the hand-press period."[48] As I have shown, by blending title-page and
Stationers' Register data with evidence derived from a physical examination
of surviving books, we can begin to sketch patterns of large-scale printinghouse
activities. However, little financial documentation has survived the
ravages of time and fire, and thus mapping the terrain of publishing activity
in mid-Jacobean London is much more difficult. A title page might provide
an imperfect glimpse at the business deals behind the book, but at best we
can only use the collected data in broad strokes. During the five-year period
in question, nearly 200 different names or organizations appear on title pages,
over half of whom, according to title-page evidence, averaged less than 10
edition sheets per year. At the other end of the scale, the four establishments
who controlled protected printing published 44% of the output during the
same period. Table 5 details the twenty-two stationers who published or
controlled the publication of at least 80 sheets a year, with the data broken
down by total output, percent of output that is reprinted material, and subject
classification.

As was the case with most commerce in early modern England, monopolies
played a large role in determining who printed what texts, and the four
most productive entities dealt primarily with protected printing. Henry VIII
awarded patents for printing on royal privilege, while Edward gave limitedperiod
patents for individual titles. Elizabeth, however, greatly expanded the
concept of patents by awarding lifetime rights to print whole classes of books.
It was during her reign that individuals began acquiring sole rights to biblical
publication, prayer books, law books, Latin and Greek printing, almanacs,
and the like. Poorer stationers infringed on the growing number of
restricted texts, resulting in a stream of small squabbles within the Company.
At the request of the Stationers' Company, the Star Chamber in 1586 reorganized
the jumbled patent situation and most of the discord died away.
In 1603 the materials that became known as the English Stock were awarded
to the Company in perpetuity, including primers, Psalters, psalms, almanacs,
and prognostications. This collection of protected works earned a significant
income, and when the Stationers bought Abergavenny House in 1611 for
their new hall they did so "from the stocke of the [par]tners in the Privilege."[49]
A few years later in 1616 the English Stock was expanded and the
Latin Stock formed; the latter was mainly concerned with the importation
of Latin works from the continent and did very little domestic publishing.

Table 5. London publishing by output and genre, 1614-1618 (in edition sheets)

                                               

			Genre
Establishment[50]	Total	Proportion reprinted[51]	Information	Ephemera	History	Law & Politics	Literature	Official Docs.	Religion
King's Printing House	6069	73%	97	21	4	748	151	342	4706
Stationers' Company[52]	4898	63%	329	183	64	3071	259	—	992
Adam Islip	3751	63%	572	—	314	2550	56	1	258
John Legat	1970	50%	683	—	76	—	146	3	1062
Thomas Adams	1285	65%	619	—	390	—	96	—	180
Henry Featherstone	1268	62%	—	3	73	—	556	—	636
Thomas/Jonas Man	1242	58%	144	—	—	—	19	—	1079
Nathaniel Butter	1046	42%	—	40	—	—	185	2	819
Walter Burre	1036	43%	64	—	793	24	58	—	97
William/Isaac Jaggard	1021	17%	329	1	—	3	11	21	656
Officina Nortoniana[53]	967	0%	—	19	22	19	23	—	884
Matthew Lownes	871	33%	114	18	157	—	255	—	327
Mab/Edwards/Bloome[54]	751	39%	—	—	—	—	—	—	751
Arthur Johnson	672	66%	40	—	210	—	42	—	380
Roger Jackson	576	44%	268	—	—	—	57	—	251
Alsop/Creede	530	79%	39	—	40	—	385	—	66
William Barrett	530	33%	—	11	33	—	108	—	378
John Budge	487	37%	55	—	—	—	39	7	386
Nicholas Okes	474	40%	124	—	62	33	122	1	132
John Beale	462	9%	—	5	—	22	250	5	180
Simon Waterson	462	63%	5	—	180	—	31	—	246
Edward Blount	429	72%	—	1	—	—	134	—	294

Acquisition and ownership of book trade patents were not limited to stationers,
but the bulk of these awards went to members of the trade.[55]

By the middle of James I's reign, protected printing fell into four groups:
the English Stock, the Latin Stock, the King's Printer material (see below),
and the Ballad partners.[56] The English Stock is the most important of these
classes of texts, for it served the dual purpose of providing a steady return to
those who could afford to invest in the stock (shares ranged from £50-200)
while at the same time generating a pool of funds to assist poor stationers (a
printer obtained the right to produce one edition by paying sixpence in the
pound for the poor). Overall, the effect of these patents was to channel certain
classes of books to a select group of stationers, the impact of which will
become evident in the examination of individual printing houses that follows.

The most important and potentially profitable printing establishment in
Jacobean London was the King's Printer. For the first 100 years of printing
in England, royal publishing was essentially on a contractual or commission
basis, with the title "King's Printer" or "Queen's Printer" applied only to a
particular work or set of works and their production undertaken by private
printing houses. However, when Christopher Barker was awarded the post
in 1577 it became recognized as a distinct office in which publication rights
lay not with an individual house or title but with the office itself. Barker also
purchased Bacon House in 1579 and established it as a separate printing

office, a move that "led ultimately to the concept of a royal printing house
under joint ownership."[57] When Barker retired ten years later his deputies
George Bishop and Ralph Newberry ran the institution. In 1593 Barker's
eldest son Robert became a third deputy, eventually acquiring the position
and its patents outright in 1600.

Despite the broad variety of patents under its control, the office of the
King's Printer experienced frequent financial difficulties. For a number of
years Bonham Norton had dealings with Robert Barker, and at some point
Norton and John Bill apparently became partners with Barker in the King's
Printing Office, perhaps as part of an investment arrangement to pay for the
so-called `Authorized Version' of the Bible in 1611. Early in the partnership
things went smoothly, so smoothly in fact that Barker's eldest son Christopher
and Norton's eldest daughter Sarah were married in 1615. However, Norton's
aggressive and often unscrupulous activities soon resulted in Barker filing a
suit in Chancery in 1618 to recover the office, an action that marked the beginning
of a series of legal squabbles that would ultimately result in Norton's
imprisonment in 1630 and subsequent retirement to Shropshire. Given the
tangled business dealings of Barker, Bill, and Norton during this period, I
am treating their individual and corporate efforts under the general heading
of the King's Printer.

The bulk of the patents acquired over the years and controlled by the
King's Printer consisted of a monopoly on the printing of large- and smallformat
Bibles, some prayer-books, and certain classes of official documents, of
which the printing of Bibles consumed a majority of the office's time and
resources. The large folio Royal Bible (containing the text of what is commonly
called the King James Bible of 1611) could be a massive undertaking,
for it was printed lectern size to be read in churches. The 1616 Royal Bible
ran in 273 edition sheets (STC 2244), while one printed the next year required
366 (STC 2247),[58] or a total of 639 edition sheets for two Bibles (by
comparison, the total five-year output of Purfoot's house was 637 sheets). The
slightly smaller Geneva Bibles, usually printed in quarto format for personal
use, were nonetheless large undertakings in themselves, with the two editions
of the work published in 1615 accounting for 138 edition sheets apiece
(STC 2241, 2242). Barker rarely ventured beyond Bibles, proclamations, and
prayers: on one occasion in 1614 he printed a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes,
Bishop of Ely (STC 622); around the same time he printed a couple of broadsides
(without his name on the title page), one outlining table manners (STC
23634.7), the other extolling the virtues of rosemary (STC 24844.7); in 1616
he printed some anti-Catholic tracts with John Bill (STC 6996, 6998). Other
than these minor diversions, however, Barker seems to have focused solely

on printing materials whose patents he controlled. When Bill and Norton
began to take a more active role in the office, their first task seems to have
been printing a large retrospective collection of the proclamations of Elizabeth
(STC 7758.3, 7886 sqq.). Once this project was underway they commenced
printing the same materials that took all of Barker's attention. They
also, under the auspices of the Officina Nortoniana and the royal patent for
printing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, printed a number of non-biblical controversial
works and religious commentaries.

Overall, the King's Printer accounted for 6069 edition sheets, or roughly
17% of all London printing from 1614-1618, with slightly over one-half of
that total devoted to Bibles and the Book of Common Prayer, while almost
three-quarters of the office's production consisted of reprints. The scope of
this particular paper does not go beyond output and genre, but it is part of
a larger study that includes a detailed examination of the year 1616 and
from which we can catch a glimpse of how the business managed its workflow.
During this year the printing house issued 740 edition sheets of biblical
text: two 2° Bibles, one 4° Bible, an 8° New Testament, a 24° New Testament,
and a 24° collection of five Old Testament books. The office used three
different type bodies (nonpareil, brevier, pica) and two different faces (roman
and black letter), giving it extraordinary flexibility when juggling the setting,
proofing, and printing of the texts. For example, the two large folios (a
Geneva and a Royal Bible) were both set in a pica body, although one employed
a roman face while the other was black letter. In practical terms this
meant that the books could be set simultaneously since they used separate
typecases. The proofing and printing could also take place simultaneously,
with a sheet of black letter text being proofed while the roman text was
being machined and vice versa. Likewise the 8° and 24° New Testaments
could be printed concurrently, for the former volume was set in brevier while
the latter was set in nonpareil. Efficiency may have been of particular importance
in 1616, for in addition to biblical texts, Barker and Bill teamed
up to print King James's A Collection of His Majesties Workes (STC 14344),
a 154-sheet folio that must have tied up the press's font of english body type
for a stretch of time. For all works produced by the King's Printer in 1616,
roughly two-thirds of the composition was in pica, one-third in brevier and
english, with a small amount of nonpareil and great primer.

While the King's Printer held the patent on large- and small-format
Bibles, prayer books and the like, Adam Islip had upon Thomas Wight's
death in 1605 bought the rights to print law books belonging to the English
Stock. As a result, for much of his career he was engaged in producing multiple
editions of a relatively small collection of titles. For example, between
1605 and 1629 (when the law patent expired and the rights passed to the
assignees of John More), he published over thirty-two editions of the highly
profitable law reports of Sir Edward Coke (averaging from forty to eighty
edition sheets each, STC 5493-5526.5) as well as Coke's massive 1614 Booke
of Entries (368 edition sheets, STC 5488), and large law compilations such as
the 1618 folio A Collection of Sundrie Statutes (382 edition sheets, STC

9328). The exact value of the volumes printed by Islip is unknown—the
order awarding him the right only noted he be charged "such reasonable
rate & alowance as shalbe judged to be sufficient . . . from tyme to tyme"[59] —
but evidence exists to indicate that the Company held these patents in high
regard. For example, when the Stationers purchased the rights to Ashe's Le
Primier Volume del Promptuarie they contracted to pay James Pagett of the
Middle Temple £50 a year for six years.[60]

The Company also contributed financing to the production of these
titles, especially during the first years after Islip's assumption of the printing
rights. Between 10 November 1606 and 12 October 1607, Islip was awarded
sums by the Company to help pay for the publication of an octavo edition
of Christopher St. German's The Dialogue in English, Betweene a Doctor of
Diuinities, and a Student in the Lawes of England (23 sheets, STC 21578), a
folio edition of Coke's law digest La Size Part des Reports (46 sheets, STC
5509), an octavo edition of William Lambard's Eirenarcha: or the Office of
the Iustices of the Peace (44 sheets, STC 15171), and what is likely a lost
edition of one or both parts of William Fulbecke's A Parallel or Conference
of the Civil Law, the Canon Law, and the Common Law of England (approximately
twenty-three sheets for Part 1 and thirty-one sheets for Part 2,
STC 11415 and 11415a).[61] The records concerning the last two titles include
the size of the edition and the price allowed for paper, from which we can
estimate that Islip was paid roughly £29 for the Lambard volume[62] and
perhaps £13 or £14 for Fulbecke's Parallel.[63] Ten years later Islip received
nearly £300 for the Collection of Sundrie Statutes mentioned above,[64] while
in 1622 he and John Haviland were awarded an undetermined sum for
printing Richard Montagu's Analecta Ecclesiasticarum Exercitationum (106
sheets, STC 18029).

Of course, the individual books themselves had value, and care was taken
to prevent those who had the right to produce them from printing a few
extra copies for private sale. In 1627 the Stationers' Court issued an edict
calling for strict accounting of the paper supplied for each work so that the
Company could check for surreptitious extra copies by comparing the amount
of material consumed with the number of books printed. Islip himself testified
in 1622 that he paid each workman 4d a title "in liewe of a Copie due to
them by the Custome of the Companie,"[65] and was compensated for his
expense. Islip was also a member of the ill-fated Irish Stock when it was
created in 1618.

During the 1614-1618 period, Islip printed a little over 3750 edition

sheets, or roughly 10% of the total London production. Of these works, twothirds
were legal volumes, 15% were education-related (mainly a couple of
French vocational works and John Rider's Latin-English dictionary, STC
21034), 10% history (a translation of Pierre d'Avity's The Estates, Empires
& Principallities of the World, STC 988), 8% religion (an annotated New
Testament), and a smattering of literary publishing. Indeed, with the exception
of the five large volumes parenthetically mentioned, almost everything
Islip printed during this period derived from the lawbook patent and
the English Stock. When compared with the London trade in general, Islip
printed half of all material classified under Law and Politics, with the only
significant work of law not printed by Islip being Ashe's Le Primier Volume
(printed by John Beale).

The overwhelming emphasis on large lawbooks is reflected in the size
and format of Islip's output as well. While the average size of a work printed
in London during this time was a little more than twenty-one sheets (see
above), over the same period Islip averaged eighty-five sheets per title. He
also printed mainly folio volumes, with 71% of his output printed in that
format, 19% quarto, 9% octavo, and the remaining 1% contained in a pair
of small duodecimos. After the lawbook patent expired, Islip remained an
active and important member of the Stationers' Company, serving as warden
and master. He died in the fall of 1638.

Beyond the London trade a smaller market for specialized books existed
at the two universities. A charter in 1534 gave Cambridge University the
right to erect a press for its own use, although it wasn't until 1583 that
Thomas Thomas set up a house and began printing books for the local
market. The London Stationers attempted to crush what they viewed as an
infringement on their prerogative, and although a Star Chamber decree in
1586 recognized the right of the university to maintain one press, disagreements
continued well into the seventeenth century. John Legat was wellconnected
within the Company, apprenticing with Christopher Barker and
moving to Cambridge, first as the assistant and then in 1588 the successor to
Thomas, who was also his father-in-law. Legat ran the Cambridge office for
twenty-two years before moving his enterprise to London around 1610, where
he operated until his death in 1620. Both Thomas and Legat were independent
businessmen who ran a house licensed by the university but not owned
by it. Thus when Legat moved to the larger London market he took all his
equipment and materials with him, leaving his successor in rather bad
straits.[66] With the exception of Nicholas Okes, Legat is the only master
printer listed of the period not to be liveried. The Stationers had been a
livery Company since 1560, and this gave them certain rights in city and
parliamentary governance. Individual stationers called to livery could vote
in Company and city elections as well as stand for office, and it also made
one eligible to purchase shares in the English Stock. A stationer who was

called to livery and refused could be fined,[67] although there is no record of
Legat being either called or fined.

As one might expect from a stationer associated with the Cambridge University
(even after the move to London he continued to call himself "Printer
to the University" and to use the Cambridge device),[68] a significant amount
of Legat's output was aimed at the academic and intellectual market; roughly
32% of his output was informational, with the bulk of that total resulting
from a single reprint of the 233-sheet folio Praxis Medicinae Universalis in
1617 (STC 25865). The remainder of his production was religious (58%),
supplemented by a smattering of literature (6%) and history (4%). Almost
all of Legat's religious output consisted of large-format volumes of commentary
or instruction by divines like William Perkins, with 58% imposed in
folio and 29% in quarto. Consequently the average size of his titles is twice
that of the trade in general—over forty-one edition sheets per work. He died
in 1620 and his son, also named John, took over the business.

Ranking publishers by total output clearly displays the primacy of protected
printing. If we view publishing activity according to specific types of
works being produced, however, certain other patterns begin to emerge. In
some areas a handful of concerns dominated the trade, for example in Law
and Politics where the Stationers' Company (3071 sheets) and Islip (2550
sheets) were responsible for the bulk of the output. Likewise the King's
Printing House controlled the printing of Official Documents while the
Stationers, with the Almanac patent, determined who printed most extant
Ephemera. In other areas the work is much more dispersed. Legat and Islip
published a significant amount of works of Information, but eleven others
published at least 100 edition sheets from 1614-1618 (see table 6). Even

Table 6. London information publishing by output, 1614-1618

                           

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	683
Thomas Adams	619
Adam Islip	572
Stationers	329
William & Isaac Jaggard	329
Roger Jackson	268
Thomas & Jonas Man	144
John Tapp	136
John Browne	133
Nicholas Okes	124
Richard Field	123
John Marriot	117
Matthew Lownes	114

more diverse is literary publishing, where 17 stationers published at least
100 edition sheets during the period of this study (see table 7). History is
dominated by Walter Burre, whose two editions of Walter Ralegh's History
of the World in 1614 and 1617 (STC 20637 and 20638, 394 sheets each) place

Table 7. London literary publishing by output, 1614-1618

                                   

Publisher	Edition sheets
Henry Fetherstone	556
Alsop/Creede	385
Stationers	259
Matthew Lownes	255
John Beale	250
Humble & Sudbury	231
Laurence Lisle	230
John Smethwick	188
Nathaniel Butter	185
King's Printing House	151
John Legat	146
Edward Blount	134
George Norton	133
Nicholas Okes	122
Thomas Archer	112
William Barrett	108
Thomas Purfoot	105

him far ahead of Thomas Adams (390 sheets), Adam Islip (314 sheets), Arthur
Johnson (210 sheets), Simon Waterson (180 sheets), Matthew Lownes (157
sheets), and George Purslowe (128 sheets). Fewer than forty stationers in all
can be identified as working with this subject area.

Finally, the more complex area of religious publication is a mixture of
dominance and diversity. The King's Printing House controlled the printing
of most Bibles and all Books of Common Prayer (although Islip and Adams
did publish some New Testaments), while the Stationers determined Psalm
printing; these works constituted about one-quarter of the total religious
publishing during this time. A slightly larger group marketed devotional
works, where five concerns issued half the output—John Budge (170), Nicholas
Bourne (155), Sam & Joyce Macham (139), the Stationers' Company (115),
and the joint venture of Ralph Mab, George Edwards and Jacob Bloome
(114). Likewise, three-quarters of the controversial works were published by
the King's Printing House (740), Officina Nortoniana (656), Matthew Lownes
(283), William Barrett (196), Nathaniel Butter (124), and Henry Fetherstone
(122). Eleven different establishments contributed to the publication of religious
instruction (see table 8), while even more worked with commentary
(see table 9).

Sermon publishing is a little more difficult to outline. While two groups
of stationers stand out from the rest—Ralph Mab, George Edwards and

Table 8. London religious instruction publishing by output, 1614-1618

                       

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	428
Thomas & Jonas Man	303
Arthur Johnson	212
Mab/Edwards/Bloome	208
William & Isaac Jaggard	143
Thomas Pavier	135
Richard Woodroffe	121
William Barrett	112
Edward Blount	108
John Hodgets	107
Nathaniel Butter	102

Table 9. London religious commentary publishing by output, 1614-1618

                             

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	587
William & Isaac Jaggard	485
Thomas & Jonas Man	464
Nathaniel Butter	458
Henry Fetherstone	395
William Aspley	286
William Bladen	238
King's Printing House	228
Officina Nortoniana	228
Thomas Chard	162
Sam & Joyce Macham	127
Richard Field	116
Mab/Edwards/Bloome	103
Simon Waterson	100

Jacob Bloome (327 sheets), and Thomas and Jonas Man (292 sheets)—roughly
half of all stationers that we can identify as being involved in publishing
during this period printed at least one sermon. The top five sermon publishers
controlled approximately one-third of the output, the next fourteen
controlled another third, and the remaining 75+ the final third. Compare
this with Commentary (36 publishers), Controversial (35 publishers), Devotional
(59 publishers), and Instructional (73 publishers).

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.