From The History of Lapland by John Shefferus, 1674, the first anthropological book published by the Press
The work of the Press during the Civil War is of interest to historians and bibliographers on account of the great number of Royalist Pamphlets and Proclamations issued while the Court of Charles I was at Oxford; a number swollen in appearance by those printed in London with counterfeit Oxford imprints. But this period is not important in the history of the Learned Press; and after 1649 it suffered a partial eclipse which did not pass until the Restoration.
From W. Maundrell’s Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, Oxford, 1703, engraved by M. Burghers
The history of the Press in the latter part of the seventeenth century will always be connected with the name of the second of its great patrons, Dr. John Fell, Dean of Christ Church and Bishop of Oxford. Fell made the great collection of type-punches and matrices from which the beautiful types known by his name are still cast at Oxford; he promoted the setting up of a paper mill at Wolvercote, where Oxford paper is still made; he conducted the long, and ultimately successful, struggle with the Stationers and the King’s Printers, from which the history of Oxford Bibles and Prayer Books begins (1675). In 1671 he and three others took over the management of the Press, paying the University £200 a year and spending themselves a large sum upon its development. Lastly, it seems that he suggested to Archbishop Sheldon the provision, due to his munificence, of the new and spacious printing house and Theatre which still bears his name. The Press was installed there in 1669, and began to issue the long series of books which bear the imprint Oxoniae e Theatro Sheldoniano, or in the vulgar tongue Oxford at the Theater. These imprints, indeed, were still used, at times, long after the Press had been moved from the Sheldonian to its next home in the Clarendon Building. Many learned folios were printed at this time, including pioneer work by Oxford students of Oriental languages; the book best remembered to-day is no doubt Anthony Wood’s Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis published in 1674.
To this period belongs also the first exercise of the privilege to print Bibles and Prayer Books, which was recognized, as we have seen, at least as early as 1637, when the Stationers’ Company paid the University to refrain from printing Bibles. This agreement lasted until 1642, and, by renewal at intervals, until 1672, when it was at length denounced; and in 1675 a quarto English Bible was printed at the Theater, and a beginning made of what has become an extensive and highly technical process of manufacture and distribution.
Early in the eighteenth century the Press acquired, with a new habitation, a name still in very general use. The University was granted the perpetual copyright of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion (a possession in which it was confirmed by the Copyright Act of 1911); and the Clarendon Building was built chiefly from the profits accruing from the sales of that book. Many editions were printed in folio at various dates; and the Press Catalogue still offers the fine edition of 1849, with the notes of Bishop Warburton, in seven volumes octavo, and that of the Life in two volumes, 1857; the whole comprising over 5,000 pages and sold for £4 10s. Still cheaper is the one-volume edition of 1843, in 1,366 pages royal octavo, the price of which is 21s. More recently the demands of piety have been still further satisfied by the issue of a new edition based on fresh collations made from the manuscript by the late Dr. Macray. Though the Clarendon Building long since ceased to be a printing house, one of its rooms is still The Delegates’ Room; and there the Delegates of the Press hold their stated meetings.