This major, revisionist reference work explains for the first time how the Stationers' Company acquired both a charter and a nationwide monopoly of printing. In the most detailed and comprehensive investigation of the London book trade in any period, Peter Blayney systematically documents the story from 1501, when printing first established permanent roots inside the City boundaries, until the Stationers' Company was incorporated by royal charter in 1557. Having exhaustively re-examined original sources and scoured numerous archives unexplored by others in the field, Blayney radically revises accepted beliefs about such matters as the scale of native production versus importation, privileges and patents, and the regulation of printing by the Church, Crown and City. His persistent focus on individuals - most notably the families, rivals and successors of Richard Pynson, John Rastell and Robert Redman - keeps this study firmly grounded in the vivid lives and careers of early Tudor Londoners.
Table of Contents
Volume 1: 1. 1357-1500: historical and lexical introduction; 2. 1501-1509: in the beginning ...; 3. 1510-1520: royal privilege and clerical scrutiny; 4. 1521-1528: the Church clamps down; 5. 1529-1534: the old order changeth; 6. 1535-1541: a septennium of bibles; 7. 1535-1541: the Company grows; 8. 1542-1546: the end of Henry's reign. Volume 2: 9. 1547-1553: the reign of Edward VI; 10. 1553-1557: from catastrophe to charter; 11. 1554-1557: the road to incorporation; 12. 1501-1557: conclusion; Appendices: A. The founding of the Company, 12 July 1403; B. Edition-sheets versus 'masterformes'; C. Importation statistics; D. Privileges, patents, and placards; E. A surfeit of Bourmans; F. John Day of Barholm; G. The sites of six printing houses; H. Maps: Fleet Street, St Paul's Churchyard, Paternoster Row; I. Stationers' Hall and its neighbours; J. The charter of 1557; K. STC books (and others) included in the graphs; Manuscripts cited; Bibliography; Index of STC numbers; General index.
Author Biography
Peter W. M. Blayney is an independent scholar widely considered to be the leading expert on the book trade in Tudor and early Stuart London. His publications include The Texts of King Lear and Their Origins (1982), which reconstructed the printing of the First Quarto in unprecedented detail, and his groundbreaking monograph, The Bookshops in Paul's Cross Churchyard (1990), which pioneered the field of book-trade topography. His controversial article on 'The Publication of Playbooks', which demonstrated that Victorian literary scholars were mistaken in believing Tudor and Stuart play-quartos to have been among the best-selling books of their day, won the Sohmer-Hall Prize for 1997. He has been awarded fellowships by Trinity College, Cambridge, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Bibliographical Society.
