A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898

by Henry R. Plomer

In January 1791 appeared the first number of Boydell's Shakespeare. The history of this notorious undertaking was briefly this. Boydell was an art publisher in Pall Mall, where he had established a gallery and filled it with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Opie, and Northcote, chiefly in Shakesperian subjects. George Nicol the bookseller proposed to the Boydells that William Martin, brother of Robert Martin of Birmingham, should be employed to cut a set of types with which to print an edition of Shakespeare's works, to be illustrated with the drawings then in Boydell's gallery. This William Martin had learnt his art in the foundry of Baskerville; and such is the irony of fate, that less than twenty years after the death of that eminent founder, his work, scorned by the booksellers of London in his own day, was imitated in what was certainly one of the most pretentious books that had ever come from the English press. The printer selected for the work was William Bulmer, a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomson, the printer, of Burnt House Entry, St. Nicholas Churchyard. At that time he formed a friendship with Thomas Bewick, the engraver, who in his Memoir tells us that Bulmer used to 'prove' his cuts for him.

After serving his time, Bulmer came to London and entered the printing-office of John Bell, who was then issuing a miniature edition of the poets. A fortunate accident won him his acquaintance with Boydell and Nicol, and so led to his subsequent employment at the Shakespeare press.

The Shakespeare was followed by the works of Milton in three volumes folio in 1794-5-7, and again in 1795 by the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell in quarto. In the advertisement to this work, Bulmer pointed out how much had been done by English printers within the last few years to raise the art of printing from the low depth to which it had fallen—a work in which the Shakespeare press had borne no little part. He went on to say that much pains had been taken with this edition of Goldsmith to make it a complete specimen of the arts of type and block printing. The types were Martin's, the woodcuts Bewick's, and the paper Whatman's. One copy of this book was printed on white satin, and three on English vellum.

Among the books that appeared within the last five years of the century was an edition of Lucretius in three volumes large quarto, which certainly ranks for beauty of type and regularity of printing with any book of that period. Like most of the works of Baskerville, this book was quite free from ornament, and claims admiration only from the excellence of the press-work. The notes were printed in double columns in small pica, the text itself in double pica. In the whole three volumes not a dozen printer's errors have been found. This work came from the press of Archibald Hamilton.

Time has not dealt kindly with some of these specimens of what was called 'fine' printing. After the lapse of a century, we begin to see that though the type and press-work were all that could be desired, and placed the English printers on a level with the best of those on the Continent, there was something radically wrong with the production of illustrated books. Whether it was due to the ink, or to the paper, or, as some suppose, to insufficient drying, in all these sumptuous volumes the oil has worked out of the illustrations, leaving an ugly brown stain on the opposite pages, and totally destroying the appearance of the books. This applies not only to large and small illustrations, but in many cases to the ornamental wood blocks used for head and tail pieces. In Macklin's Bible, and in the 'Milton' printed at the Shakespeare press, this discoloration has completely ruined what were undoubtedly, when they came from the press, extremely beautiful works.

Before leaving the work of the eighteenth century, a word or two must be said about the private presses that were at work during that time. The first place must, of course, be given to that at Strawberry Hill. None of the curious hobbies ridden by Horace Walpole became him better, or was more useful, than his fancy for running a printing-press. He was not devoid of taste, and though no doubt he might have done it better, he carried this idea out very well. The productions of his press are very good examples of printing, and are far above any of the other private press work of the eighteenth century. His type was a neat and clear one, though somewhat small, and the ornaments and initial letters introduced into his books were simple and in keeping with the general character of the types, without being in any sense works of art. The following brief account of the Strawberry Hill press is compiled from Mr. H. B. Wheatley's article in Bibliographica, and from Austin Dobson's delightful Horace Walpole, a Memoir, 1893.

The press was started in August 1757 with the publication, for R. Dodsley, of two 'Odes' by Gray. 'I am turned printer, and have converted a little cottage into a printing office,' he tells one friend; and to another he writes, 'Elzevir, Aldus, and Stephens are the freshest persons in my memory'; and referring to the 'Odes,' he writes to John Chute in July 1757, 'I found him [Gray] in town last week; he had brought his two Odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands.'

Walpole's first printer was William Robinson, an Irishman, who remained with him for two years. The Odes were followed by Paul Hentzner's A Journey into England, of which only 220 copies were printed. In April 1758 came the two volumes of Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of which 300 copies were printed and sold so rapidly, that a second edition—not printed at Strawberry Hill—was called for before the end of the year.

In 1760 Walpole wrote to Zouch, in reference to an edition of Lucan, 'Lucan is in poor forwardness. I have been plagued with a succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth book.' It was published in January 1761, and in the following year appeared the first and second volumes of Anecdotes of Painting in England, with plates and portraits, and having the imprint, 'Printed by Thomas Farmer at Strawberry Hill, MD.CCLXII.' Then another difficulty appears to have arisen with the printers, and the third volume, published in 1763, had no printer's name in the imprint. The fourth volume, not issued till 1780, bears the name of Thomas Kirgate, who seems to have been taken on in 1772, and held his post until Walpole's death. Between 1764 and 1768 the Strawberry Hill press was idle, but in the latter year Walpole printed in octavo 200 copies of a French play entitled Cornélie Vestale, Tragédie, and from that time down to 1789 it continued at work at intervals, its chief productions being Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, 1772, 4to, of which only 100 copies were printed, twenty-five of which went to Paris; The Sleep Walker, a comedy in two acts, 1778, 8vo; A description of the villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, 1784, 4to, of which 200 copies were printed; and Hieroglyphic Tales, 1785, 8vo.

Next to the press of Horace Walpole, that of George Allan, M. P. for Durham, at the Grange, Darlington, must be noticed. The owner was an enthusiastic antiquary, and he used his press chiefly for printing fugitive pieces relating to the history of the county of Durham. The first piece with a date was Collections relating to St. Edmunds Hospital, printed in 1769, and the last a tract which he printed for his friend Thomas Pennant in 1788, entitled Of the Patagonians, of which only 40 copies were worked off.