THIRTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK
The New York Branch is situated in the Central Building on the right
SHOW ROOMS AT THE NEW YORK BRANCH
Bible Show Room
Clarendon Press Show Room
The main function of the Branch has always been that of keeping the American public acquainted with Oxford books, both sacred and secular, and of supplying the books without avoidable delay. To this end it has been necessary to hold large stocks in New York, and to maintain an expert staff which is in touch with the book-stores and with the universities, the schools, and the book-buying public at large. The Branch has its own catalogues and its own advertisements, and it has been able to make Oxford Bibles and Clarendon Press books known and valued throughout the United States. The Branch, however, is not merely an importer; it has long recognized that many Oxford products are capable of useful adaptation to special American requirements, and that such adaptation is consistent with the preservation of what Americans have themselves called ‘the Oxford stamp’. This aspect of the activities of the Press in America is shown by the large number of Bibles which are manufactured (‘made’ is the American idiom) in the United States—among these the now famous Scofield Reference Bible is conspicuous—and also by books written—or at least rewritten—for American requirements. The Branch, in co-operation with American scholars, has produced valuable series of text-books for schools and universities—the Oxford English Series, the Oxford French Series, and the Oxford German Series. Even more important, perhaps, are adaptations of Oxford books of tried merit. Thus the Oxford Loose-Leaf Surgery derives from a (British) Oxford original (one of the Oxford Medical Publications), but has important differences in substance as well as in its novel form. This very successful work is now being followed by the Oxford Loose-Leaf Medicine, edited by Dr. Henry Christian and Sir James Mackenzie with the help of leading physicians on both sides of the Atlantic. To promote co-operation of this kind in medical science was a great part of the life-work of William Osler, who, as Regius Professor at Oxford, and a leading promoter of the Oxford Medical Publications, may be described as the founder of the medical activities of the Oxford Press as they are now carried on in Oxford, in London, in New York, and in Toronto.