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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

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 Tot tell?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 ETC (inherited by the ESC) 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[51] 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


A possible authority file is already underway at the University of Birmingham. The British Book Trade Index, directed by Maureen Bell, seeks to compile in database form "brief biographical and trade details of all those who worked in the English and Welsh book trades before 1852" ({http://www.bbti.bham.ac.uk}). The Library of Congress also maintains a set of authority files (〈http://authorities.loc.gov〉).
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