‘To Undertake Such Works as They Find to Be Wanted’: The Early Years of the Clarendon Press Series

Abstract

When considering any printing or publishing firm, however august, one should never forget to ask the embarrassing questions: how does it make its money, and how then is its money spent? For Oxford University Press in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the engine that made the profits was the printing of Bibles, for which it had gained a number of privileges in the 1580s and 1630s. However, for all sorts of technical and political reasons, the Press wasn’t inclined to exercise its profitable privilege immediately or directly. Instead it frequently sold its rights to the Stationers’ Company in London. From 1637 the university commonly received £200 per annum from the Stationers for its ‘forebearance’ from publishing Bibles, Lily’s Grammar and other profitable lines.