I am emerging from a bad week during which some nasty virus drove me to my bedroom. The actual bedroom is surrounded by books, one of which I grabbed more or less at random. It turned out to be the “Oxford Dante”—the third edition of this work (1904) first published in 1898. It was edited by one great Dante scholar, E[dward] Moore, and with an appended index by an even greater one, Paget Toynbee. This is a no-nonsense book, 490 pages in small type, every word that Dante was known to have written either in Italian or in Latin, but not a word of English anywhere. The popularity of the great Italian poeta in Edwardian England can perhaps be judged by the publication history; this daunting volume was a best seller. I still need a crib in reading Dante; but Victorian matrons dived right in. I didn’t even try to read in it, but flipped through its pages, marked only in a few places in the Latin treatise “On Monarchy,” but there very crudely in ink and a sloppy hand.
The other personal name in the front matter of the Oxford Dante (in addition to those of the two learned editors) is that of Henry Frowde, “whose name will long be remembered as the one who by sterling character, untiring energy, and conspicuous ability, made ‘Oxford University Press’ world famed.” His name may ring a faint bell for anyone who has consulted an old OUP volume, for it is in so many of them. It offered me the necessary tangent to avoid any serious reading. Frowde joined the Press in the 1870s, and he was for many years its production manager. In this volume this name is actually given as Enrico Frowde, but a less “Enrico” sort of a fellow would be hard to imagine—presuming that name leads you to think of a famous opera tenor or an infamous Florida murderer. Mr. Frowde was a reserved, very old-fashioned and erudite English Pietist who followed the practices of the Plymouth Brethren. Only incidentally was he a genius at the book trade.
His particular expertise was the Bible business; and Bibles and prayer books were an important part of the early university press’s bread-and-butter production. It was this expertise that got him hired by the Oxford University Press. In his first year he supervised the production of a half a million copies, an output he more than doubled over the years. The OUP retains to this day an important segment of this market, though far better known for both its large “trade book” business and the aura of the highest possible academic prestige. American academic presses can but wish. Maybe they ought to consider selling quality Bibles. As a very young man Frowde was hired at Oxford. Even at the turn of the twentieth century, the best-seller of best sellers was still the Bible, and Frowde was taxed with this side of the university press’s business. The tenor of British publishing in those years can be judged by a couple of extraordinary events.
The book world of 1877 was enlivened by the quatercentenary celebrations of Caxton’s introduction of printing to England. For this bibliophilic festivity Frowde supervised the exhibitionist production of the “Caxton Bible”. That is, he oversaw the creation of a whole substantial book—printing, collating, sewing, binding , the whole works--in a single day. Printing began on the Oxford presses at 2 a.m. (The type of course had been set in advance). The printed sheets were rushed by train to London, where expert workers stood ready to do the folding, rolling, collating, gilding and binding in Morocco leather. By 2p.m. gleaming copies were at the headquarters of the Caxton festivities in Kensington! Mr. Gladstone declared this the most stupendous event in the history of printing! I have never been able to find an affordable copy.
But this was merely a warm-up for the high-jinx attendant upon the printing of the Revised New Testament in 1881. Its printing was conducted with military secrecy and security. The frenzy to get an advance copy was intense, not to say insane, with offers reaching the equivalent in today’s money rumored to approach $300,000 for a copy! Americans were particularly importunate. But the sacred security of the publication of the sacred text triumphed. Long lines awaited the opening of bookshops on the appointed day—a sort of bibliophilic Filene’s Basement on Black Friday. The exact number of copies sold on the first day is unknown, but it was obviously huge.
The type blocks were sent on locked galleys to America by the fastest ship available. During the trip typesetters continued working. But of course that got the text only as far as New York Harbor. The whole of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Romans (totaling 118,000 words) were telegraphed from New York to Chicago at a vast cost, and appeared in the Chicago Times of 22nd May, 1881. Similar frenzies attended the later publication of other parts of the Revised Bible. Mr. Frowde presumably looked on with approval and pleasure, appropriately restrained of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment