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Notes
For the early history of this monopoly, see 'The Distribution of Almanacks in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century', Studies in Bibliography, XI (1958), 107-116.
It is impossible to give exact figures for the profits before 1789 either on individual Almanacks or on the business as a whole. See below, p. 41 and 'The English Stock of the Stationers' Company', The Library, 5th ser., XII, (1957), 167-186. In the Stock Board Minute Book no, V (which has recently reappeared at Stationers' Hall) there are notes of the fixing of printing numbers on 25 April 1759 and on 14 May 1760 for the years following. It is interesting to compare these figures with those for 1789 given within brackets in Table II and to note that thirteen of the Almanacks are common to both lists; these are marked below with *.
| for 1760 | 1761 | |
| Andrew's | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| Coley's | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Gadbury's | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| for 1760 | 1761 | |
| Gentleman's * | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| Ladies' * | 16,000 | 15,000 |
| Moore's * | 77,000 | 82,000 |
| Partridge's * | 8,500 | 8,000 |
| Parker's | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Pearse's | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| Poor Robin * | 11,000 | 11,500 |
| Saunders's | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Season's * | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Wing's Book * | 8,000 | 7,000 |
| White's * | 2,000 | 2,000 |
| Rider's * | 23,000 | 24,000 |
| Goldsmith's * | 6,000 | 7,000 |
| reams | reams | |
| Wing's Sheet * | 440 | 450 |
| Cambridge Sheet * | 110 | 110 |
| Raven's London Sheet * | 50 | 50 |
| ------- | ------- | |
| Totals (reams as 500) | 476,000 | 486,000 |
There are odd copies of these broadsides at Stationers' Hall. Where, in the course of this article, the authority for a statement is obviously to be found among the Stationers' archives, I have not given a detailed reference.
Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley — Poet, Publisher & Playwright (1910), p. 336, where the advertisement quoted below is given in full.
Entered first on 16 Nov. 1770 by Carnan and Francis Newbery, and on 30 Oct. 1777 and 23 Oct. 1778 by these two with Stanley Crowder, Richard Baldwin and Benjamin Collins of Salisbury. Francis was the nephew, not the son, of John Newbery; he was the son of Francis, baker of Easthampsted, Berks, and was apprenticed to William Faden, printer of Wine Office Court, on 3 Aug. 1756 (no premium); he was free on 4 Sept. 1764 and was never called to the Livery.
The London Chronicle, 22-24 Nov. 1757. The Ladies' New Memorandum Book, 1s. neatly bound, contained 'Twenty-four Country Dances for the Year 1758. A Marketing Table . . . . Maxims for the Ladies concerning the Art of Pleasing. . . . Bills of Fare for every Month in the Year. Ready Messes for Supper. New Directions for playing at Piquet. Some general Things proper to be known and remembered! . . .'
The final decision was made known on 22 Feb., but individual answers to the questions put to the Lords were being given during the previous ten days.
John Sawbridge, Wilkes's successor, on 26 Oct. 1776. His declaration was published in, among other newspapers, The London Chronicle, 2-5 Nov. 1776 and reprinted as part of Carnan's petition to the House of Commons of 29 April 1779. Carnan had printed the story, unattested, as part of his advertising campaign in 1775—in The London Chronicle of 5-7 Dec., for instance. The advertisements of Carnan and the Company, appearing as they sometimes do one above the other, make engaging reading.
The London Evening Post, 19-22 Nov., 1776, where he advertised eight of the Almanacks which he and Carnan had published jointly the year before. The full text of his statement reads as follows: 'Mr. T. Carnan having asserted, in a circular letter, that he was the only person who prevented a compromise with the Stationers Company, it becomes necessary for me to declare, that the project of printing an almanack, and to try the legality of it, was originally mine; and that I admitted Mr. Carnan to be concerned with me, at his earnest request. With respect to the compromise, I can with great truth aver, that I never had the least intention to drop my scheme; and that no offer was ever made to me on the subject, which I could believe to be serious. The intelligent public will therefore judge what degree of credit is due to a man, who is capable of asserting whatever is likely to answer his self-interested purposes.' What is 'the intelligent public' to make of a statement by a man who admits, by implication, to degrees of truth?
It may be pure coincidence that in the winter of 1774-5 the Stock-keepers were flirting with the possibility of lending £10,000 at 4½% on the security of freeholds in Monmouthshire and Buckinghamshire.
On 26 Oct. 1775 it made the last payment to Messrs Wright & Gill, the farmers of the Oxford privilege, and on 28 June 1776 the last to the Vice Chancellor at Cambridge; the threat of legal action two years later was successfully met with a bland reply.
Mr. Graham Pollard has suggested to me that the advantage which the Stationers' Company may have had from its ability to raise capital was not as great as I have assumed, and that wholesale stationers were perhaps as ready to supply stamped paper on credit for the printing of Almanacks as they were to do this for the printing of newspapers. I have no evidence for or against this possibility; I can only say that stationers were, at this period, keener supporters of the Company than the booksellers, and more interested in becoming partners in the English Stock. See 'The Stationers' Company in the Eighteenth Century,' The Guildhall Miscellany, 10 (1959).
Vincent Wing's Sheet, 6d. A Cambridge Sheet, 6d. A New London Sheet, 6d. Reuben Burrow's Diary or Sheet, 6d. Francis Moore's Vox Stellarum, 9d. Poor Robin's Almanack, by Reuben Robin, 9d. Reuben Burrow's Lady's and Gentleman's Diary, 9d. Parker's Ephemeris, 9d. Rider's Almanack, 6d., entered 19 Nov. 1776 Rider's Sheet, 6d. Goldsmith's Almanack, 6d., entered 19 Nov. 1776 In 1776 (i.e. for 1777) Carnan published all these except Parker's and added A Companion to Goldsmith, 3d. and Henry Andrews's Royal Almanack, 1s., entered 17 Dec. 1776. Compare these titles with those in the Stationers' Company's list in f.n. 23 on p. 33.
The Ladies' Almanack, and Ænigmatical Diary, 1s. 3d. Printed for J. Wheble, no. 22 Fleet-street. 'For the Polite and Sentimental Part of the Female Sex.' Stevens's Ladies Annual Journal, only 1s. 'Printed for Ann Jefferies, successor to Mrs. Stevens, Stationers'-court, Ludgate-street; and I. Taylor, near the top of Chancery-lane, Holborn.' The Ladies Own Memorandum Book By a Lady 1s. 'Printed for G. Robinson, Paternoster-row; and T. Slack, Newcastle.' The Ladies Most Elegant and Convenient Pocket Book, 1s. 'Printed for J. Wheble, in Fleet-street.' The Ladies Pocket Journal, 1s. Obtainable from 'Fielding and Walker, Paternoster-row.' The British Ladies Pocket Memorandum Book, 1s. 'Printed for J. Harris, St. Paul's Churchyard.' The House Keeper's Account Book, 1s. 6d. in blue covers. 'Printed for R. Crutwell & W. Taylor in Bath; W. Crutwell in Sherborne; R. Baldwin, Paternoster Row; and F. Newbery, in St. Paul's Churchyard; & sold by all other booksellers.' Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum Book for 1778, 1s., bound in red leather. 'Printed for J. Johnson, 72 St. Paul's Churchyard.'
The Stationers Almanack, Embellished with a most curious Headpiece. 'Printed and sold by John Ryland, Engraver and Printer, No. 67 Old Bailey,' Edward Ryland had first published this for 1746; see List of Books in The Gentleman's Magazine, Nov. 1745. William Wing's New London Almanack (with which the Court & City Calendar for 1777 is given gratis). 'Printed and stamped according to Act of Parliament, and sold by W. Cavell, near Gray's Inn, Holborn.' ('There being other Sheet Almanacks that have the name of Wing affixed to them. . . .') The New Daily Journal. Bound in red leather 20d. 'Printed for Fielding and Walker, Paternoster-row.' Kearsley's Pocket Ledger, 1s. 8d. Bound in red leather for either the Pocket or Desk. 'Printed for G. Kearsley, near Serjeant's-inn, Fleet-street; and sold by every Bookseller in England.' Harris's Pocket Journal for Town and Country, 1s. 8d. 'Printed for J. Harris, 70 St. Paul's Churchyard.' The Christian Memorandum Book 1s. bound in red leather; 8d. in stiff Dutch blue paper. 'Printed and sold by J. Wakelin and C. Hood, 8 Stationers' Alley.'
R. Welford, Early Newcastle Typography: 1639-1800 (Newcastle, 1907), pp. 73 and 76. An example from a few years later is The Bengal Calendar for 1789, printed in Calcutta and reprinted in London for John Stockdale and C. Forster. (The London Chronicle, 25-27 Nov., 1788)
Freemason's, Gentleman's, Ladies', Moore's, Partridge's, Parker's, Poor Robin, Saunders's Season's, White's, Wing's and Rider's, 9d. each stitched, and Goldsmith's, 8d. stitched; Wing's Sheet, Cambridge Sheet, Rider's and Raven's Sheets, 6d. each. Nine of these were first published 100 years or more earlier.
Carnan averred in his 1779 petition that this price cut had meant a loss of £3,000 to the Company at the previous rate of sale. This is plainly nonsense. The English Stock suffered a set-back of £2,000, from a profit of about £1,500 to a loss of over £400; some of this derived from the cut in prices, some from a drop in sales and some, perhaps, from an improvement in the terms offered to the trade as a reply to Carnan's boast in a 1775 advertisement that a 'greater Allowance will be made to the Dealers in Almanacks than ever was given before'. From 1784 the Company incurred a small additional expense by following the growing practice in the trade and instituting a Subscription Dinner at the beginning of November and a Customers' Dinner, later in the month, when stocks were delivered.
Document with receipt at Stationers' Hall. £6,000 3% Consols had to be sold in September for the additional expenses caused by this take-over. On 14 Jan. 1789 £357 14s. 3d. was paid to Newbery for Carnan's papers.
One of Carnan's ventures was much less successful than his attack on the Stationers' Company's monopoly. On 8 May 1781 Messrs Eyre & Strahan, His Majesty's Printers, obtained judgment against him in the Court of Exchequer for printing a Form of Prayer (Annual Register, xxiv, p. 177).
Calculated, not given. The gaps between the lines point to three occurrences which vitally affect these figures: (a) the doubling of the duty on sheet Almanacks, (b) the taking over of Carnan's business by the English Stock, after his death, and (c) the doubling of the duties on books and sheets.
This is the first year for which the details in this form are available, from a series of notebooks headed 'Statement of Almanacks for. . .' Wholesale prices:
- 1. £26 per 1,000
- 2. £24 "
- 3. £28 "
- 4. £36 "
- 5. £20 "
- 6. £32 "
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