By Clarendon Press Books are meant the learned, educational, and other ‘Standard’ works produced under the close supervision of the Delegates and their Oxford Secretariate, and printed at Oxford. These books have a long history, and the Catalogue contains very many titles which have been continuously on sale for nearly a century. The Coptic New Testament of Wilkins, published in 1716, is believed to have been continuously on sale at the original price of 12s. 6d. until the last copy was sold in 1907, only a few years short of the second century. The current edition of the General Catalogue mentions as ‘the oldest Oxford book still on sale’ another edition of the Coptic New Testament by Woide, published in 1799 and now sold for two guineas; but it has since been noticed that an injustice had been done, and that pride of place should have been given to the Gothic Gospel, a magnificently printed quarto published in 1750, of which some dozen copies (at 30s.) still remain.
These are extreme examples; they are, however, the result not of oblivion or of indifference, but of a policy which has long been and is still being pursued. The Press produces many works of learning which are so securely based that it is known that the demand, however small, will persist as long as there are copies unsold; and it is the practice of the Press to print from type large editions of such books. Clarendon Press books are neither wasted nor sold as remainders, and when a book goes out of print, some natural tears are shed.
This is one end of the scale; at the other are books commanding a large and rapid sale, books like the Oxford Book of English Verse or the Concise Oxford Dictionary and livres de circonstance like Why We are at War, which was published in September 1914 and in a few months went through twelve impressions and was translated into six foreign languages. Books of this kind are produced in mass, as cheaply as is consistent with a high standard of workmanship, and are sold all over the world in competition with rival publications and by the employment of appropriate methods of advertisement.
Between these two classes lies a great mass of miscellaneous books, too general in character to admit of description here. They are in many languages, ancient and modern, of the East and of the West; of all fields of knowledge, divine, human, and natural; and of all stages of history from the Stone Age to the Great War. It follows necessarily that Clarendon Press books appeal to widely different publics and call for the application of various instruments of distribution and publicity. All, however, benefit by the widely diffused appreciation of the standards of scholarship and of literary form which the Press has set itself to uphold. The public expects much of any Oxford book, and the satisfaction of that expectation is often onerous; but the necessary effort is justified by the results—‘the Oxford book is half sold already’.
III
THE PRESS ABROAD
§ 1. The Press in India
