The Romantic Side of English Bookselling

N°

BY RICHARD HAGUE

"

"

UTTALL defines romance as a fabulous relation or story of wonderful adventures, a fiction full of extravagant fancies and situations." Not a very suitable definition in this case. The Oxford Dictionary comes a little nearer our requirements: a relation of unusual incidents and happenings remote from everyday life," but even that doesn't quite suit. May we make our own definition and take it to mean the human side, in contrast to the purely commercial side of bookselling? There always was and always will be romance in this aspect of bookselling, for there is no other business in which the human element counts for so much.

From the earliest times there was some sort of trade in the written thoughts of men, but we shall have more than enough ground to cover if we limit our survey to the history of the sale of printed books, and that chiefly in Great Britain.

So we will go back to about 1476, the wonderful days when Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson were issuing the earliest books printed in England.

The birth of printing was in itself one of the greatest romances in the history of civilisation. The broadcasting of men's thoughts on a comparatively large scale, the widespread circulation of the world's knowledge, must have been an even more exciting event than wireless is to-day.

It must be understood that the expression "bookselling" really includes all forms of the distribution of books, that is, it embraces the printer, the publisher, the book-auctioneer, and the bookseller proper, whether new or old, wholesale or retail.

In the beginning there was only the printer, but it was soon found necessary to employ others to put the products of the press into circulation.

So we turn to Caxton and find him furnishing romances for the nobles and religious books for the churchmen, classics for scholars, and later on histories, travels, etc., until gradually every form of intellectual activity was represented in the output of the press.

How were the books sold? Many of them were printed to order, at the command of his noble patrons. Others were handed to the travelling salesmen who visited the great fairs, notably that at Stourbridge, which had its Bookseller's Row right through the years until 1725. Other copies went over to the continental fairs at Frankfurt and Leipzig.

Caxton's output included copies of the works of Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Sir Thomas Malory, and, being a scholar and an artist, he not only printed these works but also edited them, and produced them as works of art. His successor and pupil, Wynkyn de Worde, was a man of inferior calibre, described by Gordon Duff as a mere mechanic. Still he carried on the production of books and will always be remembered as one of the pioneers of the art of printing.

So great was the demand for books that the English printers soon found themselves unable to cope with it and foreigners were invited to come and help. One of the best known of these was Richard Pynson, a Norman, who printed many school books.

The year 1517 saw a riot in which Pynson's workmen were attacked, sore bete and wounded," the foreign invasion apparently annoying the English printers. The law stepped in and tried to adjust matters by insisting that apprentices should be employed. It is worth noting that this policy of protection had a bad effect, for printing in England at once began to deteriorate.

It is hard to over-estimate the part played by the new art in the great drama of the Reformation. Printers and booksellers shared in the excitement of those momentous years. Printers of heretical books went in danger of their lives. Papal authorities strove with all their power to suppress the "blasphemous and pestiferous books," which included Tyndale's translation of the New Testament. But in spite of all their efforts the new literature continued to circulate, and Luther's tracts still found their way into the country. Many of the books which were supposed to have been printed abroad were in fact the work of English printers. "Upright Hoff" of Leipzig and "Ian Troost" of Zurich, for example were really John Oswen of Ipswich.

The smuggled scriptures and tracts were eagerly sought for and were passed secretly from hand to hand, many folk sitting up all night when they got the chance to read one of them. People willingly gave as much as £4 for a single volume, or if they had not the cash would pay with a load of hay or other produce of equal value.

In spite of all threats, no less than six editions of Tyndale's New Testament were exhausted before 1526. Any copies which fell into the hands of the authorities were promptly and publicly burnt, and the consequence was that to-day there is only a fragment of one copy of the first edition in the British Museum, two imperfect copies of the second, and two or three of later editions. People found in possession of these books were forced to throw them into the flames at Paul's Cross and at Oxford, and as we know Tyndale himself was burnt.

Certain orthodox works, however, were licensed for sale, including some of the writings of Erasmus, but chiefly the legal output was limited to almanacs, broadsheets, ballads, attacks on the Reformers, etc.

In 1535 the famous Coverdale Bible was printed, probably by one Froschauer of Zurich, but it was not licensed until two years later. In 1538 Grafton and Whitchurch were ordered to prepare the Great Bible which was printed in Paris, where the paper was cheaper and better than could be had in England. In the middle of this work the Inquisitor-General for France stepped in, stopped the printing, and ordered all sheets already printed to be destroyed. Coverdale and Grafton had to fly from Paris, but greatly daring they returned later, captured some of the precious sheets and all their apparatus, which they brought triumphantly back to England, where the work was safely completed.

The upset of the Reformation had a bad effect on the printing of secular books. There was no market for educational works or even for story books. As one of the Reforming enthusiasts put it, Nigh every man hath the Holy Bible instead of the old and fantastical and fabulous books of the Table Round, Lancelot du Lac, Huon de Bordeaux, etc., whose impure filth and vain fabulosity the light of God hath abolished utterly."

The year 1540 saw a Catholic reaction and the Bible printers received a set-back, Grafton being charged with adding notes to the Great Bible. However, in 1547, Henry VIII. died, and during the short reign of Edward VI. thirteen or fourteen editions of the Bible appeared.

When Mary came to the throne in 1553, the pendulum swung back once more. Grafton at once lost his post as royal printer, John Cawood taking his place. Grafton and Whitchurch were both flung into prison. We should have noted, however, that the year 1549 saw the publication, by these two men, of the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer and the temporary abolition of all previous service-books.

Paraphrasing Gilbert's famous song we may certainly say that in these days, "A printer's lot is not a happy one.

"

In 1557 Philip and Mary granted a Charter to the Stationers, hoping there by to exercise some real control on the press. This idea did not work and their next move was to issue a proclamation threatening death to all persons who persisted in keeping and reading heretical books.

(In passing, it may be mentioned that the Stationers were simply booksellers who had a station or stall for the sale of their wares. It was much later that the term came to mean those who only sold the materials for writing, pens, paper, ink, etc.)

spacious days of the great Elizabeth," and the final

We come now to the " ascendancy of Protestantism.

The most famous printer of the period was John Day, himself an ardent Protestant, who printed and published the works of Latimer, Parker and Foxe. Most of us have seen books bearing on their title his well-known device-a woodcut depicting a youth rousing his sleeping companion and pointing to the rising sun, with the punning device " Arise, for it is day."

Another notable printer of the day was Richard Jugge, who in 1568 issued the Bishops' Bible, and before that the first part of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, popularly known as the Book of Martyrs, which first appeared in 1563 and ran

quickly through four editions. It is an enthralling romance, though its historical value is more than dubious. Jugge, by the way, was one of the earliest printers of music in England.

Presently came the Puritan movement and printers were busy in the production of some of the most virulently abusive tracts ever published, the most famous of them being the notorious works, generally ascribed to John Penry and called the Martin Marprelate Tracts.

From this period onwards the distinction between printer and publisher becomes more clearly marked and we find also a great widening in the field covered by printed works. Gradually there came the works of Spenser, Sidney, Stow, and translations of notable works from foreign pens. The great age of Shakespeare was at hand.

In 1593 John Field printed Venus and Adonis, and a year later, Lucrece. In the same year a pirate-printer (i.e. an unlicensed craftsman) printed Titus Andronicus. Romeo and Juliet appeared in 1597, Hamlet in 1603, and the first complete edition of the Sonnets was produced by Thorpe in 1609.

Another important work, issued by Thomas Blount in 1612, was the first part of Shelton's translation of Don Quixote. Then we pass on to the great year 1623, when Blount, with the help of Jaggard and one or two others set up a great landmark in the history of printing and of English Literature by issuing the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works. It was sold at £10. It would be pleasant to pick a few copies at that price to-day.

The beginning of James I.'s reign saw the increase and spread of bookshops. These had so far clustered wholly around the district of Paternoster Row, but now they could be found in Holborn, Strand and Charing Cross. It was about this time also that the practice was instituted of advertising other books at the end of a volume.

Among important dates of this reign we may note 1597 (Bacon's Essays), 1605 (The Advancement of Learning), 1616 (the first folio of Ben Jonson's works), and 1617 (Minsheu's Guide to Tongues-the first book published by subscription).

The story of the trade during the reign of Charles I. and the time of the Commonwealth is one of persecution and barbarous cruelties, which were practised alike by Royalists and Republicans. The saintly Archbishop Leighton was whipped, branded and cropped. William Prynne who attacked the court and the stage in his famous Histrio-Mastix, was fined £5,000, was pilloried, cropped and sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. This however merely seemed to whet his indomitable spirit, for he contrived to publish his "News from Ipswich," which cost him another £5,000 and further mutilation.

When the Puritans came into power they behaved in an equally ruthless

manner.

We cannot think of this time without remembering John Milton, whose Areopagitica," one of the leading documents in the history of the freedom of the press, was issued in 1644. In 1646 Humphrey Mosely published Milton's Poems. The book contains a wretched portrait of the author which Milton saw before publication but was unable to suppress. He therefore appended to it four lines in Greek, which Mosely innocently allowed to appear. Masson trans

lates them thus :

That an unskilful hand had carved this print
You'd say at once, seeing the living face,
But finding here no trace of me, my friends,
Laugh at the botching artist's misattempt.

Still, Mosely did important work, publishing many famous books, amongst them
Howell's Familiar Letters, Waller's Poems, and works by Davenant, Crashaw,
Shirley, Cowley, and others.

He also, where possible, bought the copyright of works by Shakespeare, Massinger, and Ford and reprinted them. He was quite the most enterprising publisher of his time.

A good deal of interest centres round the publication of the Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne. In 1642 a certain printer, appropriately named Andrew Crooke got hold of a MS. copy of this work and produced two unauthorised

editions. One would naturally have expected its author to be annoyed, but all he did was to supply Mr. Crooke with a revised text for an authorised version, which that gentleman calmly issued in the following year, with the announcement that it was a true and full copy of that which was most imperfectly and surreptiously published before." Possibly Sir Thomas brought pressure to bear upon him in order to secure the admission, but in any case Crooke covered his sin very gracefully.

Hobbes' Leviathan, another famous work, made its first appearance in 1651, and in 1653 a still more famous work was published, to wit, Walton's Compleat Angler, now one of the world's rarest books. The mention of Walton reminds us of his life of Donne, whose poems were published nearly twenty years earlier despite his son's hypocritical efforts to suppress them on the score of the looseness of some of them. It is hard to understand the younger Donne's attitude towards them, for six months before his death he published a volume of his own poems which contained matter far more indecent than anything his father ever wrote, and what is more, he left behind MSS. of a still more licentious character.

Perhaps the finest monument of printing belonging to this period was Brian Walton's Polyglot Bible, published in six great volumes in 1657.

The Restoration time opened notably for the booksellers by introducing to them the great Roger Lestrange, Surveyor of the Imprimery, who proved himself a thorn in the side of the Stationers Company. Indeed, apart from him, it was an evil time for the trade. In 1665 came the Plague, from which the printers, who lived chiefly in one of the most congested districts, suffered terribly. It was followed a year later by the Great Fire, which wiped out the headquarters of the trade in St. Paul's Churchyard. Pepys puts their losses at £150,000.

One of the chief figures of those days was Robert Scot of Little Britain, the greatest bookseller in Europe in his day, with warehouses at Frankfurt, Paris and other big continental cities. He is remembered as having been very useful to John North, Master of Trinity, to whom he supplied much valuable information about current literature.

We now pass to another landmark in the annals of learning and its dissemination, the appearance of Paradise Lost.

In March, 1667, Milton entered into an agreement with the publisher S. Simmons by which he was to receive the magnificent sum of £5 when the first edition was sold out, also £5 down and a further £5 for the third and fourth editions, if they proved to be needed. It sounds a miserable price, but we have to remember that £5 then was equal to nearly four times that amount in our present currency. Still, it was little enough in all conscience, though Milton himself was apparently quite satisfied with the deal.

In 1680, six years after Milton's death, his widow sold the copyright for £8. The first edition was sold by various booksellers, each of whom issued a special title with his own imprint. It was published at 3s. and the first edition was exhausted before April, 1669, but the second edition did not appear until 1674, the year of Milton's death, and the third in 1678. In 1680 Simmons sold the copyright to another publisher, Aylmer, for £25, and he in turn passed it on to the famous Jacob Tonson, who reprinted it in folio form in 1688. It brought him more money than any other poem he published.

About this time a long drawn struggle between printers and publishers came to a head and the publishers won, and then began the fight, which still rages, between publishers and authors. The trade in general flourished more and more. Reading became ever a more popular habit and the demand for books and still more books grew steadily and larger sums of money became involved, so that whilst Milton was content with his £5, we find Dryden, a generation later taking, according to Pope, £1,200 for his Virgil. But Dryden was a fine business man, keen to the point of being disagreeable with his publisher, Tonson. Scott terms him captious and irascible, though it appears that between their quarrels he affected to consider him a friend.

Tonson did great service to the cause of literature, for he was the publisher of Rowe's seven volume edition of Shakespeare, the first issue of the works in a handy and popular form.

(to be continued)

V.

BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES

N.B. All Booksellers should put" B.A.R." on their catalogue mailing list, as it is impossible to tell where, in what part of the world, a notice of a catalogue will attract attention and lead to business. A charge of four pence per line is made for notices under this heading. As the proprietors and publishers of "B.A.R." are also secondhand booksellers, they are in the habit of receiving numerous catalogues in their own name; but these are not reviewed here unless specially marked "B.A.R.”

Aberdeen. Low's Bookstalls, 39-50, New Market Gallery. List No. 32. Catalogue of Books on Art, Biography, First Editions, Scotland, Travels, etc. 548

items.

Bath.

George Gregory Bookstore, 8, Green Street. No. 280. Rare, Choice and Interesting Books, including Second Folio Shakespeare, 1632; Rowe's Shakespeare, 7 vols., 1709-10; Coloured copy of the Stafford Gallery; Choicely bound and extra-illustrated Books, General Literature, Travel, and Biography.

No. 281. Choice, Rare and Interesting Books, comprising sets of Standard Authors, First and Limited Editions of Modern Authors, Rare and Curious Books of the 16th-18th Centuries, General Literature, Art, etc. 1142 items.

Bristol. William George's Sons, Ltd., Cabot's Head. New World Book List. Catalogue of Books and Maps in some way relating to America and its Islands. 1456 items.

No. 384. Catalogue of General Literature, including works on Art, Architecture, Economics, France, Ireland, Military, Natural History, Naval, Painters and Painting, Sport. etc., etc. 1158 items.

Bromley. G. H. Last, 25, The Broadway. List A (1926). Catalogue of Prints, Drawings, Caricatures, Etchings, Fancy Subjects, Maps, Military, Naval, Portraits, Sporting, etc., etc. Together with a number of Topographical Views. 604 items.

List B (1927). Catalogue of Autograph Letters, Documents and Manuscripts, etc. Together with an Addenda of Books recently purchased. 665 items.

No. 136 (Part I.). Clearance Catalogue of Secondhand Books, including works on America, Art, Astronomy, Bibliography, Binding, etc., etc. 928 items. Bromley. C. H. Last, 25 The Broadway. No. 136 (Part II.). Secondhand Books; comprising Charles I., Civil War, Classical, Crime, Dickens, Drama, Economics, Ethics, Evolution, Genealogy, etc., etc. 1077 items. Edinburgh. William Brown, 18a, George Street. No. 261. Catalogue of Books in various departments of Literature, including many items from the Library of Sir James R. Fergusson; also works on Shakespeare and the Drama; First Editions of Modern Authors; Books on Scottish History; and a few Autograph Letters. 763 items.

William Dunlop, 52, George IV. Bridge. Dec., 1926. Interesting Collection of Secondhand Books, including works on Architecture, Bibliography, Economics, Folk-Lore, Heraldry, Mathematics, Scotland, etc., etc. 569 items.

Exeter. S. Drayton & Sons, 201, High Street. No. 345. List of Second-hand Books, including works on Africa, Art, Freemasonry, London, Natural History, Sport, Theology, etc., etc. 701 items.

No. 346. Clearance List of Second-hand Books and Prints on Africa, America, Art, Egypt, India, Local, London, Scotland, etc. 656 items. Hastings. C. Howes, 485, Old London Road. No. 21. Ancient and Modern Books, including works on Art, Crime, Dickens, Folklore, India, Law, Medical, Occult, Shakespeare, Trials, etc., etc. 889 items.

Leamington Spa. Simmons & Waters, 64, Bath Street. No. 343. Catalogue of Interesting Old and Modern Books, including works on Art, China, Germany, London, Medical, Mllitary, Music, Occult, Shakespeare, Sport, etc., etc. 415 items.

No. 344.

General Catalogue of Books of Various Ages, including works on America, Cookery, Kent, London, Occult, Sport, etc., etc. 375 items.