The Library on the Modern Book Trade

Guest editor: Richard Linenthal

One year ago Ralph Hanna as guest editor made a selection of articles which had appeared in past issues of The Library focusing on the ‘Late Medieval Book Trade’. The articles gathered here extend the theme chronologically under the broad heading of the ‘Modern Book Trade’. I have chosen to cover a long period of many centuries, and by necessity the articles are not a survey but rather a selection for browsing, touching on interesting issues with a central theme on the marketing of books.

Where better to begin than with Graham Pollard’s remark that ‘in the usual course of trade a book will never be printed until someone thinks it can be sold’ (Sandars Lecture for 1959). Pollard (1903–1976) was a Gold Medallist and Past President of The Bibliographical Society, a prodigious scholar of the book trade, and he no doubt benefitted from his own commercial experience as a bookseller during a lifetime of work (he became a partner in the firm of Birrell and Garnett in 1923). Graham Pollard’s first substantial bibliographical project, begun at age twenty-four, was a list of early booksellers’ catalogues, which came to fruition some thirty-eight years later in collaboration with the collector Albert Ehrman (The Distribution of Books by Catalogue from the Invention of Printing to A.D. 1800, Cambridge, for the Roxburghe Club, 1965). An appealing account of Pollard written by Esther Potter, ‘Graham Pollard at Work’, appeared in The Library in 1989.

The marketing of books involves often complex relationships between authors and printers, between printers and patrons, between printers, publishers, and the booksellers—later in our period they might be auctioneers—and between all these trade participants and the ultimate buyers of the books themselves. I begin my selection of articles with two principals of the early-modern book trade in England, William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde. The literature for both is enormous, with many articles appearing in The Library over the years. Let me focus, though, on new archival research done by Matthew Payne suggesting that Caxton may have seen himself more as a bookseller than a printer: ‘Caxton the Businessman: A New Glimpse’ (2016) [No. 1]. With regard to Caxton’s successor Wynkyn de Worde, A. S. G. Edwards and Carol M. Meale conclude that de Worde emerges as the crucial figure in the consolidation of printing as a commercial structure in England in the early sixteenth century: ‘The Marketing of Printed Books in Late Medieval England’ (1993) [No. 2].

Before 1510 no author, printer or publisher in England had a legally enforceable right to exclusive ownership; every text was in the public domain and there were not yet laws of copyright which later became crucial to the commercial book trade. In that year, however, Richard Pynson, appointed King’s Printer by Henry VIII in 1506, and ‘the most entrepreneurial’ of the earliest English printers (Lotte Hellinga, William Caxton and Early Printing in England (London, 2010), p. 117) was given for the first time exclusive rights to print the King’s statutes and proclamations. But such rules could be broken and circumvented, and by 1526 an English printer is known to have reprinted someone else’s book during its protected period. My third article is by Peter Blayney and offers a case study of two early infringements, not of major literature but rather popular books, saleable and in great demand, Lily’s Latin Grammar and a collection of thirty short sermons: ‘Two Tales of Piracy’ (2022) [No. 3].

Two articles, with sixty years between them, explore the trade relationship in the sixteenth century between England, Scotland and the Plantin enterprise in Antwerp, with the help of the extensive archives of the Plantin-Moretus Museum: Colin Clair, ‘Christopher Plantin’s Trade-Connexions with England and Scotland’ (1959) [No. 4]; and Zanna Van Loon, ‘Crossing the North Sea for Books. An Overview of the Scottish Book Trade with the Officina Plantiniana between 1555 and 1589’ (2019) [No. 5]. Both articles illustrate the significance to the English market of books imported from Continental Europe.

Book-trade activity in the seventeenth century is particularly well represented in past issues of The Library. Francis R. Johnson continued the work of H. S. Bennett on English retail book prices, between them covering the period from 1480 to 1640 (both articles published in 1950), and, more recently, Leah Orr has studied seventeenth-century auction prices (the first English book auction was in 1676) and what they can tell us about the second-hand book trade—a market where second-hand copies were generally discounted—and a far cry from the deluxe bibliomania a century or so later: ‘Prices of English Books at Auction c. 1680’ (2019) [No. 6]. The specific history of the second-hand book trade is notoriously difficult to reconstruct. ‘It was a diverse business, much of it irrecoverable for the historian’ (James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Trade, 1450–1850 (New Haven, CT, 2007), p. 193).

The late Richard Sharpe looks at the marketing strategies of the Oxford University Press with the realization that, alas, ‘the Press had never really succeeded in selling books’, in spite of the catalogues distributed most years in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: ‘Selling Books from the Sheldonian Theatre 1677–1720’ (2010) [No. 7]. Peter Lindenbaum examines the phenomenon of publishers’ booklists which first appeared in England in the late 1640s, filling the available blank pages of many books. They were intended as cheap advertising for a specific clientele, telling potential customers what other books were available in a given shop. He provides a detailed case study of the booklists of two publishers, Thomas Parkhurst and Brabazon Aylmer: ‘Publishers Booklists in Late Seventeenth-Century London’ (2010) [No. 8]. For the following century Michael Suarez focuses on the scholarly resources offered by trade catalogues (with due acknowledgements to Graham Pollard and others): ‘English Book Sale Catalogues as Bibliographical Evidence: Methodological Considerations Illustrated by a Case Study in the Provenance and Distribution of Dodsley’s Collection of Poems, 1750–1795’ (1999) [No. 9].

A fascinating glimpse of an early auction sale of bibliographical rarities is offered by Anthony Hobson: ‘A Sale by Candle in 1608’ (1971) [No. 10]. The books came from the celebrated library of the Genoese collector Giovanni Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601), comprising printed editions and some seven hundred manuscripts, including, for example, the fifth-century illustrated fragment of Homer, now known as the Ambrosian Iliad (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Cod. F. 205 Inf.). There are details of export restrictions (concerns over the movement of cultural goods are not only a modern phenomenon), complicated commercial manoeuvres, and an explanation of the curious way the sale was conducted—by candle, with the moment of extinction corresponding to the fall of the hammer in modern auctions when the property passes to the purchaser.

During the last decades of the eighteenth century and first decade or so of the following century, book collecting had become highly fashionable among the rich dilettante, with an emphasis on deluxe books and bibliographical rarities. The principal chronicler of the period of ‘bibliomania’ was Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847) and perhaps the most prominent bookseller fuelling this market was James Edwards (1757–1816). He is described by Seymour de Ricci as one of the earliest English dealers representing the ‘new and more enlightened generation of booksellers, operating on a large scale and reaping handsome profits’ (English Collectors of Books & Manuscripts (1530–1930) and Their Marks of Ownership (Cambridge, 1930), p. 89). His first and greatest achievements were to bring from Venice for sale in London the Maffeo Pinelli Library (sold at auction in 1789 and 1790), and from Paris the books of Antoine Marie Pâris d’Illins (sold at auction in 1791). The Bibliotheca elegantissima Parisina (or Bibliotheca Parisiana in English) is the subject of an article by Milton McC. Gatch, who revises our understanding of the legend surrounding James Edwards, citing the context of continental European revolutionary disruption which Edwards was able to exploit, and his skills and machinations as a salesman: ‘The Bibliotheca Parisina’ (2011) [No. 11].

Book auctions have always played an important role in the book trade, and they continue to do so. But until recent times with more commercial regulation, the public results from some sales may need to be understood and interpreted with care. The price-fixing activities of ‘the ring’ were studied in great detail and described by Arthur and Janet Freeman in their account of an auction in 1919 (Anatomy of an Auction, Rare Books at Ruxley Lodge, 1919 (London, 1990)). An appreciative review appeared in The Library (1993), written by Hans Fellner, an antiquarian bookseller and for many years a member of the Christie’s Book Department [No. 12]. This may be paired with an entertaining article written by Victor Scholderer (coincidentally published the same year as the Ruxley Lodge sale) about a seventeenth-century rant about the dishonesty of book auctions: ‘A German Diatribe Against Book Sales’ (1919) [No. 13].

Historically, some books and manuscripts have come in and out of fashion, as far as the market is concerned. There is an interesting contrast between the competitively high prices paid for the trophies of early English and Continental printers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while important manuscripts, sometimes of the same texts, were almost ignored. The situation today is nearly a complete reversal. As a case study, A. S. G. Edwards looks at the commercial circulation of manuscripts of Gower’s Confessio amantis during this period: ‘The Ownership and Sale of Manuscripts of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ (2022) [No. 14].

I expect that aspects of the book trade today will fill many pages of The Library in years to come. As a nod to recent times, let me close by recommending an entertaining account of a significant book-trade subject, about which essentially nothing else has been written. This time, a review in The Library by Nicholas Poole-Wilson of a book discussing and listing booksellers’ cost codes (usually written discreetly in pencil on the flyleaves of books in stock): Ian Jackson’s Chamberpot & Motherfuck: The Price-Codes of the Book Trade, second edition, revised and enlarged, with an essay on provenance research written by Peter Kidd (Narberth, PA, 2017) [No. 15].

Contents:

(1)     M. T. W. Payne, ‘Caxton the Businessman: A New Glimpse’, vii, 17 (2016), 103–14.

(2)     A. S. G. Edwards and Carol M. Meale, ‘The Marketing of Printed Books in Late Medieval England’, vi, 15 (1993), 95–124.

(3)     Peter Blayney, ‘Two Tales of Piracy’, vii, 23 (2022), 3–24.

(4)     Colin Clair, ‘Christopher Plantin’s Trade-Connexions with England and Scotland’, v, 14 (1959), 28–45.

(5)     Zanna Van Loon, ‘Crossing the North Sea for Books. An Overview of the Scottish Book Trade with the Officina Plantiniana between 1555 and 1589’, vii, 20 (2019), 172–204.

(6)     Leah Orr, ‘Prices of English Books at Auction c. 1680’, vii, 20 (2019), 501–26.

(7)     Richard Sharpe, ‘Selling Books from the Sheldonian Theatre 1677–1720’, vii, 11 (2010), 275–320.

(8)     Peter Lindenbaum, ‘Publishers’ Booklists in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, vii, 11 (2010), 381–404.

(9)     Michael Suarez, ‘English Book Sale Catalogues as Bibliographical Evidence: Methodological Considerations Illustrated by a Case Study in the Provenance and Distribution of Dodsley’s Collection of Poems, 1750–1795’, vi, 21 (1999), 321–60.

(10)   Anthony Hobson, ‘A Sale by Candle in 1608’, v, 26 (1971), 215–33.

(11)   Milton McC. Gatch, ‘The Bibliotheca Parisina’, vii, 12 (2011), 89–118.

(12)   Hans Fellner, review of Arthur and Janet Freeman, Anatomy of An Auction, Rare Books at Ruxley Lodge, 1919, London, 1990; vi, 15 (1993), 142–43.

(13)   Victor Scholderer, ‘A German Diatribe Against Book Sales’, iii, 10 (1919), 117–22.

(14)   A. S. G. Edwards, ‘The Ownership and Sale of Manuscripts of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, vii, 23 (2022), 180–90.

(15)   Nicholas Poole-Wilson, review of Ian Jackson, Chamberpot & Motherfuck: The Price-Codes of the Book Trade, Narberth, PA, 2017; vii, 19 (2018), 94–96.