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2. London Printing[20]

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 printer publisher, or printed mainly or entirely for others—the so-called trade printers."[21] 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.[22] 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	Self published	Edition sheets/Edition	Proportion
Printing House				1°	2°	4°	8°	12°	16°	24°	32°	64°
King's Printing House[a]	6069	na	20.9	3%	41%	36%	15%	3%	1%	1%	—	—
Adam Islip	3751	na	85.3	—	71%	19%	9%	1%	—	—	—	—
Edward Griffin[b]	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 Lownell rend="right">29%	10%	3%	—	—	—	—
Felix Kingston	1829	4%	19.5	—	25%	49%	17%	9%	—	—	—	—
Humphrey Lownes[c]	1798	9%	25.0	—	23%	41%	24%	12%	—	—	—	—
John Beale[d]	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[e]	1374	na	7.5	2%	10%	33%	29%	19%	3%	2%	2%	—
Alsop/Creede[f]	1258	39%	15.0	—	1%	75%	22%	2%	—	—	—	—
William/Isaac Jaggard[g]	1227	83%	27.9	—	52%	38%	6%	4%	—	—	—	—
George Purslowe[h]	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[i]	465	51%	8.5	3%	12%	64%	16%	5%	—	—	—	—
Thomas Dawson[j]	430	8%	25.3	—	61%	27%	9%	3%	—	—	—	—
John/William White[k]	253	17%	5.6	5%	—	77%	18%	—	—	—	—	—

third of their output for themselves. If we isolate the output and self-publication 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.

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."[23] 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).[24]

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.[25] 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.[26] 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 operatingpresses. 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 small-format 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."[27] 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 large-format 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 (STC20637), and again in 1617 when he printed an enlarged Purchas (294 sheets, STC 20507) along with the second edition of the History (STC 20638).[28] 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."[29] 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.[30] 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 mid-sized 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."[31]

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.[32]

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.[33] 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[34] ).