Explore "The English Provincial Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders to 1557" by E. Gordon Duff on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the two series of lectures that I had the pleasure of delivering in Cambridge as Sandars Reader in 1899 and 1904, I dealt with the printers, stationers, and bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535, the period from the introduction of printing into England by William Caxton to the death of his successor, Wynkyn de Worde. In the present series I propose to turn to the provincial towns and trace the history of the printers, stationers, and bookbinders who worked in them from 1478, when printing was introduced into Oxford, up to 1557.
I have extended the period to 1557, because in that year a charter was granted to the re-formed Company of Stationers, and in this charter was one very important clause, "Moreover we will, grant, ordain, and constitute for ourselves, and the successors of our foresaid queen, that no person within this our kingdom of England, or dominions thereof, either by himself, or by his journeymen, servants, or by any other person, shall practise or exercise the art or mystery of printing, or stamping any book, or any thing to be sold, or to be bargained for within this our kingdom of England, or the dominions thereof, unless the same person is, or shall be, one of the society of the foresaid mystery, or art of a stationer of the city aforesaid, at the time of his foresaid printing or stamping, or has for that purpose obtained our licence, or the licence of the heirs and successors of our foresaid queen."