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1. Book Production in Mid-Jacobean London[5]
During the five-year period 1614-1618, London stationers produced an average of 7616 edition sheets and 356 distinct editions each year,[6] and the

Year | Edition sheets | Editions[a] | 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 |

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,[10] an order issued by the Provost of Paris in 1618 decreeing that each master printer have at least two working presses,[11] 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.[12] 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

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.[16] 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,

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 tocome 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.[18] 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).[19] 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-

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% | — | — | — |

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% | — | — | — |

The information upon which this study relies comes from the STC, the ESTC,ProQuest's Early English Books Online ({http://eebo.chadwyck.com}), the UMI Early English Books microfilm series, numerous public and private On-line Public Access Catalogues (OPACs), and a physical examination of roughly half the items in question. In some cases I was forced to estimate the edition-sheet total of a particular title based upon data derived from similar editions of the same work (for example when dealing with the Ames collection of title pages in the British Library), and in one case I was not able to acquire or estimate edition sheet totals because it was unavailable: Bartholomew Robertson, Sapienta Secundum Pietatem (London: John Beale, 1618; STC 21098.2). The base quantitative unit in this study is the edition; in those cases where the editors of the STC have split a single edition into multiple entries to reflect the presence of variants, issues, or impressions, I have only counted the single edition entry in my totals. The STC defines an edition as "An item having a majority of sheets (usually all) from reset type," while a variant has a "major change in title, imprint or colophon," an issue has had the "addition, deletion, and/or substitution of leaves or sheets constituting up to half of a book's original sheets," and an impression "indicates standing type which has been reimposed" and additional sheets printed from it (1.xli). In those cases where the STC editors were able to identify the quantity of reset material in an issue, or when Ior when I was able to generate such figures from my physical inspection, I have included those numbers in my data.
Compare this with Mark Bland's estimate of 5400 edition sheets and 262 editions in 1600 London (457-458).
These figures differ significantly from those generated by Maureen Bell and John Barnard, "Provisional Count of STC Titles 1475-1648," Publishing History 31 (1992), 48-66. The scope of their study forced Bell and Barnard to count all STC items, while as noted above, I was able to eliminate variants, issues, and impressions from my totals and focus my analysis on composition and production numbers.
See Julian Roberts, "The Latin Trade," The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. 4, 1557-1695, ed. John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, with the assistance of Maureen Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 141-173.
Alain A. Wijffels, "Sir Edward Stanhope's Bequest of Books to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1608," Private Libraries in Renaissance England, ed. R. J. Fehrnbach (Binghamton:Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), 1.41-78.
R. J. Fehrenbach, "An Inventory of Books in the Possession of Sir Roger Townshend, ca. 1625," Private Libraries in Renaissance England, ed. R. J. Fehrnbach (Binghamton:Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), 1.79-136.
Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), 164-165.
Henri-Jean Martin, Print, Power, and People in 17th-Century France, trans. David Gerard (Metuchen and London: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 39-40.
Whether the trade's growth indicates an associated prosperity is less clear, and the progressive model presented here is only a simple overview. For a discussion of the issues concerning the economics of the London book trade see John Barnard's Introduction to The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. 4, especially pp. 14-21.
Of course, one's experience of prosperity varied with station. The relentless flood of immigration into London also caused a growing disparity between wages and prices. Figures cited by C. G. A. Clay indicate that the relative purchasing power of a craftsman's wages in the building trade between 1500 and 1720 reached its lowest point in the 1610s (Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700 [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984], 216-218).
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