Upon the advent of machinery and cylinder printing, the use of movable type for printing from was supplemented by quicker and more durable methods, and William Ged's long-despised discovery of stereotyping is now an absolutely necessary adjunct of modern press-work. This, again, was in some measure due to Earl Stanhope, who in 1800 went to Andrew Tilloch, and Foulis, the Glasgow printer, both of whom had taken out a patent for the invention, and learnt from them the process. He afterwards associated himself with Andrew Wilson, a London printer, and in 1802 the plaster process, as it was called, was perfected. This remained in use until 1846, when a system of forming moulds in papier mâché was introduced, and this was succeeded by the adaptation of the stereo-plates to the rotary machines.
It would be foreign to the purpose of this work, which is concerned with printing as applied to books, to attempt to describe the Linotype and its rival processes which have been recently introduced to further facilitate newspaper printing. We must, therefore, return to our book-printers, and note first that the Shakespeare Press of William Bulmer, for which Martin the type-founder was almost exclusively employed, continued to turn out beautiful examples of typographic work during the early years of the nineteenth century. A list of the works issued from this press up to 1817 is given by Dibdin in his notes to the second volume of his Decameron, pp. 384-395. Some of the chief items were The Arabian Nights Entertainments, 5 vols. 1802, 8vo; The Book of Common Prayer, with an introduction by John Reeves, 1802, 8vo; The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, translated by Sir R. C. Hoare, 2 vols. 1806, 4to; Richardson's Dictionary of the Arabic and Persian Languages, 2 vols. 1806-10, 4to; Hoare's History of Wiltshire, 1812, folio; Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, 4 vols. 1812, 4to; and the same author's Bibliotheca Spenceriana, 4 vols. 1814-15, 8vo, and Bibliographical Decameron, 3 vols. 1817, 8vo. These three last are considered to be some of the best work of this press, which also turned out many books for private circulation only. William Bulmer died on September 9th, 1830, after a long and active life, and was succeeded by his partner Mr. William Nichol.
Nor had Thomas Bensley slackened anything of his enthusiasm for fine printing. Twice during the first twenty years of the century he suffered severely by fire: the first time in 1807, when a quarto edition of Thomson's Seasons, an edition of the Works of Pope, and many other books were destroyed; the second in 1819, on June 26th, when the premises were totally burnt down. This was followed by the death of his son, and shortly afterwards he retired from business, and died on September 11th, 1835. Not only was he an excellent printer, but he did more than any other man of his time to introduce the improved printing machine into this country.
John Nichols was another of the great printers of his day, and he too was burnt out on the night of February 8th, 1808. No better account of the magnitude of his undertakings at that time could be found than his own description of the disaster, which he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine in the following March:—
'Amongst the books destroyed are many of very great value, and some that can never be replaced. Not to mention a large quantity of handsome quarto Bibles, the works of Swift, Pope, Young, Thomson, Johnson, etc. etc., the Annals of Commerce, and other works which may still be elsewhere purchased, there are several consumed which cannot now be obtained at any price. The unsold copies of the introduction to the second volume of the Sepulchral Monuments; Hutchins' Dorsetshire; Bigland's Gloucestershire; Hutchinson's Durham; Thorpe's Registrum and Custumale Roffense; the few numbers that remained of the Bibliotheca Topographica; the third volume of Elizabethan Progresses; the Illustrations of Ancient Manners; Mr. Gough's History of Pleshy, and his valuable account of the Coins of the Seleucidæ, engraved by Bartolozzi; Colonel de la Motte's Allusive Arms; Bishop Atterbury's Epistolary Correspondence; and last, not least, the whole of six portions of Mr. Nichols' Leicestershire, and the entire stock of the Gentleman's Magazine from 1782 to 1807, are irrecoverably lost.'
'Of those in the press, the most important were the concluding portion of Hutchins' Dorsetshire (nearly finished); a second volume of Manning and Bray's Surrey (about half printed); Mr. Bawdwin's translation of Domesday for Yorkshire (nearly finished); a new edition of Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven; Mr. Gough's British Topography (nearly one volume); the sixth volume of Biographia Britannica (ready for publishing); Dr. Kelly's Dictionary of the Manx Language; Mr. Neild's History of Prisons; a genuine unpublished comedy by Sir Richard Steele; Mr. Joseph Reid's unpublished tragedy of Dido; four volumes of the British Essayists; Mr. Taylor Combe's Appendix to Dr. Hunter's Coins; part of Dr. Hawes' annual report for 1808; a part of the Biographical Anecdotes of Hogarth; two entire volumes, and the half of two other volumes of a new edition of the anecdotes of Mr. Bowyer,' etc.
Writing to Bishop Percy in July of that year, Nichols stated that he had lost £10,000 beyond his insurance in this outbreak.
John Nichols died on the 26th November 1826, after a long and laborious life. He was a born antiquary, and a voluminous author, his chief works being The History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Leicester, completed in 1815 in eight folio volumes, and Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 1812-15, an expansion of the Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, which had been printed in 1782. This work was afterwards supplemented by Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 6 vols. 1817-31, to which his son afterwards added two additional volumes. John Nichols was Common Councillor for the ward of Farringdon Without from 1784 to 1786, and again from 1787 to 1811. In 1804 he was Master of the Stationers' Company. He was succeeded in business by his son John Bowyer Nichols, and the firm subsequently became J. Nichols, Son, and Bentley. Like his father, John Bowyer Nichols was editor and author of many books, and was appointed Printer to the Society of Antiquaries in 1824. He died at Haling on October 16th, 1863, leaving seven children, of whom the eldest, John Gough Nichols, born on 22nd May 1806, became the head of the printing-house, and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He was one of the founders of the Camden Society (1838), and edited many of its publications. He was the promoter and editor of The Herald and Genealogist, and his researches in this direction were of great importance. The Dictionary of National Biography enumerates thirty-four works from his pen, most of which it would be safe to say were also printed by him. He died on 14th November 1873.
Another press of importance in the first half of the nineteenth century was that of Thomas Davison. He was the printer of most of Byron's works, and many of those of Campbell, Moore and Wordsworth; but his chief claim to notice rests upon the magnificent edition of Whitaker's History of Rickmondshire in two large folio volumes, printed in 1823, and upon that of Dugdale's Monasticon, in eight folio volumes, issued between 1817 and 1830, an undertaking of great magnitude. In Timperley's Encyclopædia it is stated that Davison made important improvements in the manufacture of printing ink, and that few of his competitors could approach him in excellence of work.
The story of the firm of Eyre and Spottiswoode would, if material were available, form an interesting chapter in the history of English printing. It is the direct descendant in the royal line of Pynson, Berthelet, the Barkers, and finally of John and Robert Baskett, the last of whom assigned the patent to John Eyre of Landford House, Wilts, whose son, Charles Eyre, the great-grandfather of the present George Edward Briscoe Eyre, succeeded to the business in 1770. During the seventeenth century, the work of the Government and the sovereign had been divided among several firms, but in the eighteenth century it was again given to one man, John Baskett. In the printing of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have also a share; but all the other Government work is done by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode.