IV
I should not wish to deny that significant changes occurred in printing
and publishing between the years 1500 and 1800; but on two counts I wish
to offer some resistance to the evasive tactics of those who would for their
part deny the relevance of conditions in any one period to those in another.
Of course 1586 is not 1623, nor 1683, 1695, 1701, 1731, nor 1790. Yet
just as Greg has argued that bibliography, as the study of the transmission
of literary texts, comprehends manuscripts as well as printed books, so I
wish to argue that the integrity of the subject can best be preserved and a
sound methodology evolved only if we stress the similarity
of
conditions in all periods. Then fine distinctions may be
entertained, not as period differences but as the inevitable result of variables
which will differ from day to day and house to house. My second reason
for resisting the too ready rejection of analogy is that very little
fundamental research has been done on the
history of printing. History is never so gross as when it's being formulated
to serve a theory; and bibliographers with their eyes closest to the internal
physical evidence have, on the whole, seen least of what lies beyond
it.
The familiar picture of 'Elizabethan' printers, restricted in number,
presses, edition quantities, and apprentices, and therefore constantly
under pressure, and operating an essentially uncomplicated, balanced
production schedule, is attractive in its simplicity. But in its generalized
form such a picture is also apt to be dangerously misleading. Simpson,
discussing the limitation of presses, once wrote that "When a printer with
at most two presses had a book on the stocks, he could do nothing else until
he had printed it off."
[87] Such a view,
so stated, now seems extremely naive, although something like it is implied
in many studies even today. The documentation that exists for a shop of
comparable size in 1700, printing books in editions no larger than those
permitted in 1587, makes it clear that productive conditions of enormous
complexity involving as many as ten or a dozen jobs at any one time were
normal in a small two-press house.
But even the size of 'Elizabethan' shops has perhaps
been
a little too readily set at one or two presses, and the 'strict limitation' on
their numbers over-stressed. The evidence would appear to be
straightforward, but is it? Were there really too few printers and presses for
the work available, or too many? In 1582, at a time of complaints from
journeymen about lack of work, Christopher Barker said that the number
of printing houses then in London (22) could be more than halved and the
needs of the whole kingdom still met.[88] In 1583 the complaint of the 'poor
men'
of the Company was that they had too little work, and Commissioners
appointed to look into the trade recommended that some privileged books
be released to the poor for printing, a practice continued by the several
Stocks of the Stationers' Company throughout the 17th century to assist
printers who were short of work (Greg, Companion, pp. 21,
128). In May 1583 there were 23
master printers, possessing in all 53 presses: Barker had 5, Wolf 5, Day
and Denham 4 each, and six others 3 apiece.[89] Although the Commissioners of
1583
recommended that no more presses be set up without license, their
recommendation in respect of the existing presses was simply
That euerie printer keping presses be restrained to a reasonable
nomber of presses according to his qualitie and store of worke, as for
example the the Quenes printer hauing but .v. presses, and the lawe printer
but twoo, we think it not reason that Wolf haue .v. but to restraine him and
such other to one or two by discretion till his stoare of worke shall require
moe (Greg, Companion, p. 131).
Could anything more permissive be desired? The Star Chamber decree of
1586 forbade the erection of new presses "tyll the excessive multytude of
Prynters havinge presses already sett up, be abated" (Greg,
Companion, p. 41). A statement of the position the following
month shows that the number of printers had risen to 25 and that Barker
had increased the number of his presses to 6 (Arber,
Transcript,
V, lii). Apart from isolated cases of surreptitious printing punished by
seizure of equipment, and apart from the normal licensing of those who
succeeded to the select company of master printers, there is nothing to show
how this positive abatement in the number of presses was procured. For the
next twenty-nine years, there is little primary evidence at all to show in
what measure the conditions of 1586 had ceased to apply. Indeed, apart
from the recurrent fuss over privileges, there is evidence of a general
relaxation.
When in 1613-15 the unemployed journeymen again complained about
their inability to set up presses, they saw that a necessary condition of such
a freedom would be access to privileged copies — otherwise there
would
be little work.[90] The master printers
for their part were worried, or made a pretence of being so, at the
"multitude of Presses that are erected among them" and by a self-denying
ordinance agreed that, the King's Printer apart, fourteen of them should
have 2 presses each and five of them 1.[91] Since the number of printers was
20 in
all, such a rule can only mean that many of them had retained from a much
earlier period, or set up over the last few years, far more
presses than the numbers now set down. And since the number of printers
did remain fairly constant, the agreement can only have been designed to
secure a slightly more equitable distribution of work among these very
printers; it implied,
therefore, considerable under-production in the
smaller shops.
Are we to take it that this decision by the Court of Assistants was
immediately enforced? There is no evidence of it. Eight years
later, on 5 July 1623,
Whereas the mr printers of this Company, according
to a former
order haue reformed themselues for the number of presses that eueryone is
to haue and accordingly haue brought in their barres to shewe their
Conformitie therevnto. . . (Jackson, p. 158).
again it is set down down that, the King's Printer excluded,
fourteen printers should have only 2 presses each and five of them 1.
Augustine Matthews was one of these five, but it is clear from another
entry that he had more than one press (Jackson, p. 159). By September the
following year the order had still not been put into effect and an inspectorial
party was authorized to dismantle any excess presses.
[92] By 7 Feb. 1625 the Court was
prepared
to give up:
It is ordered that if the mr Printers doe not
Conforme themselues
to the number of presses as hath ben agreed of by former orders and bring
in their barres before or ladye day next, Then those
that are
already brought in to be deliu'ed backe againe [my italics] (Jackson,
p. 173).
In 1637, after being restricted to one press ever since 1586, the Cambridge
printer was graciously allowed a second. When in 1632 Roger Daniel had
moved in he took over:
Six printing presses, five copper plates, six bankes, seven great
stones, one muller, thirteen frames to set cases on . . . six and fifty paire
and an halfe of cases for letters made of mettle and one case for wooden
letters, five and twenty chases, twenty gallies, fifty paper and letter bords,
. . . (Roberts, p. 50).
The Star Chamber decree of 1637, reporting that of 1586 as defective
in some particulars so that divers abuses had arisen to the prejudice of the
public, attempted to keep the number of master printers down to 20 (there
were 22), but the number of presses, always more difficult to restrict, was
allowed to rise (Greg, Companion, p. 105). By 1649 there
were
apparently some 60 printers in London and by 1660 the number had
increased to 70, though it is doubtful whether there were so many printing
houses. The Licensing Act of 1662 provided that no more printers be
licensed until the number had fallen again to 20, but nothing was done to
enforce the ruling and for the next thirty years it was openly ignored.[93] In 1668, after the great fire, there
were
65 presses in 26 houses, the King's Printer having 6, two others 5
each, another 4, seven had 3, nine had 2, and six had 1.
[94] Negus in 1724 listed 75 London
houses
and 28 in the provinces. Mr Ellic Howe comments: "There was, therefore,
no great expansion in the trade compared with its state seventy years
previously" (
London Compositor, p. 33). By 1785 there were
124 printers; in 1808 "not more than 130", although Stower in the same
year listed 216; by 1818 the total in London was 233.
[95]
All I wish to ask now is whether there is much conclusive evidence
that 'Elizabethan' conditions in any one printing house were utterly
distinctive from those common in the 18th century? Expansion of the trade
there undoubtedly was but except in a very few cases (Watts in the 1720's,
Bowyer, Richardson and Strahan mid-century — a half dozen at most
out
of upwards of a hundred?) what we get in the 18th century is proliferation,
multiple establishments, not an exceptional growth in any one. The
fundamental conditions of work in each remain unchanged. Or again, if it
is urged that the multi-press shops of the 18th century have few parallels
in the early 17th century, one is entitled to ask quite directly how Ackers'
and the Bowyers' three-, four-, and five-press shops of the 1730's differ
from those of Barker, Wolf, Day, Denham, all of whom had more than
three presses, and the other six printers who in 1583 had three presses
each. Or one might ask how significantly, in terms of
size, either group differs from those listed in 1668 (eleven of whom had
three or more presses). And even if it is conceded that none of the printers
limited to two presses in 1615 and 1623 would have grossly exceeded this
number, a certain scepticism is still permissible since there is no evidence
at all that they conformed to the ruling and much that they refused to. Or
take the question the other way round: grant for the moment that most
Elizabethan shops were two-press or one-press houses; it may then be asked
what the distribution of presses was within 18th-century houses. How many
had two, how many had only one? In the second week of October 1732
even Bowyer had only two (See appendix II (f).). For the rest, no one
knows, and even press figures may not tell us.
Is the problem any simpler if we look at edition quantities? It is true
that these were limited by regulation in Elizabethan-Jacobean
times and not in the 18th century. Yet two points must be kept in mind.
First, very few books printed in the 18th century, apart from some
newspapers and periodicals about which some firm figures are at last
available, ever in fact exceeded the limits for editions laid down in 1587
and liberalized in 1637. Neither the Cambridge, Bowyer, Woodfall, nor
Strahan documents suggest that for any one edition, however many
impressions it might comprehend, there is any very gross disparity between
Elizabethan and 18th-century conditions in this matter. Out of some 514
books printed by Strahan between 1738 and 1785, only 43 were printed in
2000 copies or more, and of these only 15 were in editions of 3000 or more
(Hernlund, "Strahan's Ledgers", p. 104). The edition quantities I cite for
Dyche's
Guide to the English Tongue may be more in
keeping
with some statements I have seen about expansion of the trade in the 18th
century — and with others implying trade restriction and small
editions in the 17th century. In any case it leads me to my second point: the
prodigious numbers of certain books that were produced in the earlier
period. Professor Todd once remarked that "a certain discretion common
to most authorities, including bibliographers, moves us to view the
unknown as unmentionable". And the loss of much ephemera of the 16th
and 17th centuries (almanacks, school texts, and many other books required
in multiple editions by the several Stocks of the Stationers' Company) has
perhaps made us unmindful of the volume of such work. The late Cyprian
Blagden's analysis of the distribution of almanacks in the second half of the
17th century, only one aspect of such printing, is a useful corrective.
[96] For the earlier period odd cases
reveal
substantial printings: the 4000 copies of the Psalms in metre, for example,
printed by Frank and Hill in 1585; the 10,000 copies of the ABC and Little
Catechism printed the same year by Dunn and
Robinson (Greg,
Companion, p. 37). In three years, during
the
early 1630's the Cambridge printers provided for the London Company
18,000
Pueriles Sententiae, 12,000 Aesop's
Fables,
6000
Pueriles Confabulationes, 6000 copies of Mantuan, and
at
least seven other books in 3000 copies or more (Roberts, p. 51). But the
major evidence of large editions, far in excess presumably of the limits set,
is the complaints from journeymen. The Company regulations of 1587,
designed for the benefit of the journeymen, sought to provide further work
by restricting the use of standing formes and by limiting impressions to
1500 copies of some books and 3000 of others (Greg,
Companion, p.
43). These were of course Company regulations enforced, if at all, by those
least likely to gain from them. The workmen are further complaining in
1614, and in 1635 an organized protest is made about the extraordinary
number of books printed at one impression and the abuse of standing
formes. The alleviation of the journeymen's distress may have been
procured by the restriction of standing formes to the Psalter, Grammar and
Accidence, Almanacks and Prognostications, but one doubts it.
[97] The 1635 provision that no
nonpareil
books exceed 5000 copies, no brevier exceed 3000 (6000 in some cases),
and that all others be kept to editions of 1500 or 2000 (3000 with
permission), suggests that multiple impressions and large editions were
hardly the prerogative of the 18th century (Greg,
Companion,
p. 95).
Professor Todd has probably done most to set the general attitude
towards 18th-century printing and thereby also to imply that conditions in
the earlier periods were considerably different. He writes:
[Eighteenth-century books] are the products of conditions of greater
complexity than those which apply to earlier periods, and therefore
occasionally require supplemental techniques for their analysis. It has not
been sufficiently realized that printing, in this century, has progressed
beyond the era of the simple handicraft and now represents one of mass
production, where not a few but hundreds of pages of type may be retained
and repeatedly returned to press, where not one or two individuals but
batteries of pressmen and compositors may produce, in a matter of hours,
editions running into thousands of copies, where not one but several books
may be put to press concurrently by the same personnel. These practices,
though extraordinary in the seventeenth century have become commonplace
in the eighteenth . . . ("Editorial Problem in the Eighteenth Century", p.
46).
And elsewhere:
Before the expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695 the process of
book-making was undoubtedly less confused than afterwards: only
thirty-five master printers were authorized to practise the trade, and most
of these, we may be sure, conformed to the regulation limiting the number
of presses and apprentices for each shop. . . . After 1695, though, the
conditions for disorder increase in approximately the same ratio as the
means for detecting it disappear ("Observations on Press Figures", p.
179).
Professor Todd is undoubtedly right that
some 18th-century
books are the products of conditions of greater complexity: any increase in
size will increase the number of variables. Undoubtedly too in the largest
houses a good deal of type was kept standing, although it would be
interesting to go into the economics of such a practice. For the rest, the
case for any really radical difference between the centuries would seem to
have been over-stated. Perhaps a fine historical exactitude will be possible
when more primary documentation has been published and some serious
thought given to its economic implications.