The story of Oxford University Press spans five centuries of printing and publishing. Beginning with the first presses set up in Oxford in the fifteenth century and the later establishment of a university printing house, it leads through the publication of bibles, scholarly works, and the Oxford English Dictionary, to a twentieth-century expansion that created the largest university press in the world, playing a part in research, education, and language learning in more than 50 countries. With access to extensive archives, The History of OUP traces the impact of long-term changes in printing technology and the business of publishing. It also considers the effects of wider trends in education, reading, and scholarship, in international trade and the spreading influence of the English language, and in cultural and social history - both in Oxford and through its presence around the world. This first volume begins with the successive attempts to establish printing at Oxford from 1478 onwards. Ian Gadd and sixteen expert contributors chart the activities of individual university printers, the eventual establishment of a university printing house, its relationship with the University, and influential developments in printing under Archbishop Laud, John Fell, and William Blackstone. They explore the range of scholarly and religious works produced, together with the growing influence of the University Press on the city of Oxford, and its place in the book trade in general.

The years 1711 to 1714 saw some of Swift's most brilliant and powerful political pamphleteering. Writing for the Tory government, he did more to settle the fate of parties and the nation than any literary figure, before or since. This volume collects together major defences of the government's position, including The Conduct of the Allies and The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, vigorous attacks on his opponents, short satirical broadsides, and brief contributions to periodicals. It also includes some little known work not present in previous editions of Swift. This is the first fully annotated edition of these works. A comprehensive introduction, drawing on contemporary literary and historical scholarship, is supported by detailed explanatory notes on each text. It is also the first edition to identify and collate all relevant contemporary editions and provide a full account of the textual history of each work.

The story of Oxford University Press spans five centuries of printing and publishing. Beginning with the first presses set up in Oxford in the fifteenth century and the later establishment of a university printing house, it leads through the publication of bibles, scholarly works, and the Oxford English Dictionary, to a twentieth-century expansion that created the largest university press in the world, playing a part in research, education, and language learning in more than 50 countries. With access to extensive archives, The History of OUP traces the impact of long-term changes in printing technology and the business of publishing. It also considers the effects of wider trends in education, reading, and scholarship, in international trade and the spreading influence of the English language, and in cultural and social history - both in Oxford and through its presence around the world.

In 1646 in Newgate Gaol in London, a political activist, Richard Overton, penned a pamphlet that contained dangerous ideas. An Arrow Against All Tyrants asserted the inalienable rights of the individual. 'No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's... For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom.' The thoughts contained within were radical at a time of historic upheaval in England. This book reprints Overton's bold, declamatory pamphlet, carefully typeset from the original at the British Library. It is introduced by Ian Gadd, Professor of English Literature at Bath Spa University, who sets Overton's work into its literary and historical context. An Arrow Against All Tyrants is deal for anyone interested in the tumult of radical ideas during the English civil wars and the both of human rights. Introduction by Ian Gadd (excerpt) In October 1646, somewhere on the streets of London, the bookseller George Thomason picked up a scruffily printed work entitled An Arrow Against all Tyrants and Tyranny by Richard Overton (fl. 1640-63) and, as was his habit, noted the date of his latest acquisition on its title-page. Thomason had been systematically collecting all sorts of printed items since 1640 and An Arrow was just the latest example of what he and his contemporaries would have called a pamphlet - a word that, of course, still has currency today but that lacks much of the potency and meaning that it had for Overton's first readers. First of all, a pamphlet was not a book. This may seem a curious thing to say, especially as you're currently holding this book in your hands, but a 17th Century reader would have understood the distinction. For a start, a pamphlet was not bound. Many printed works in England in this period were sold unbound - as folded, printed sheets o in the expectation that a purchaser would get them bound, but some kinds of printed items, including pamphlets, were never intended for binding. Instead, a pamphlet like An Arrowwould have been 'stab stitched': simply held together by coarse thread that had been stabbed through the left-hand margin when the pamphlet was closed. In contrast to the careful, precise, and hidden sewing of a book binding, stab-stitching signalled a pamphlet's sense of urgency and directness - and also its likely ephemerality. More in book

The years 1711 to 1714 saw some of Swift's most brilliant and powerful political pamphleteering. Writing for the Tory government, he did more to settle the fate of parties and the nation than any literary figure, before or since. This volume collects together major defences of the government's position, including The Conduct of the Allies and The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, vigorous attacks on his opponents, short satirical broadsides, and brief contributions to periodicals. It also includes some little known work not present in previous editions of Swift. This is the first fully annotated edition of these works. A comprehensive introduction, drawing on contemporary literary and historical scholarship, is supported by detailed explanatory notes on each text. It is also the first edition to identify and collate all relevant contemporary editions and provide a full account of the textual history of each work.

Beginning with one of the crucial technological breakthroughs of Western history - the development of moveable type by Johann Gutenberg - The History of the Book in the West 1455-1700 covers the period that saw the growth and consolidation of the printed book as a significant feature of Western European culture and society. The volume collects together seventeen key articles, written by leading scholars during the past five decades, that together survey a wide range of topics, such as typography, economics, regulation, bookselling, and reading practices. Books, whether printed or in manuscript, played a major role in the religious, political, and intellectual upheavals of the period, and understanding how books were made, distributed, and encountered provides valuable new insights into the history of Western Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.