Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921 — John Shaqi
Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921Oxford University Press
History
Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press; Printing -- England -- Oxford -- History
The Clarendon Press Institute in Walton Street, close to the Press
itself, provides accommodation for lectures, debates, and dramatic and
other entertainments, as well as a library, a reading room, and rooms for
indoor games. The building was given by the Delegates, who contribute to
its maintenance, but its management is completely democratic. The members
appoint their own executive and are responsible for their own finances.
The Council have since 1919 issued a quarterly illustrated Magazine,
printed ‘in the house’. The _Clarendonian_ publishes valuable and
entertaining records of the professional interests and social activities
of the employees of the Press, as well as affording some outlet for
literary aspirations.
§ 2. _The Press in the War_
The Press made to the prosecution of the War both a direct and an
indirect contribution. In August 1914 about 575 adult males were employed
at Oxford; of these sixty-three, being members of the Territorial Force,
were mobilized at the outbreak of war; and of the remainder some 293
enlisted in 1914 or later. Considering the number of those who from age
or other causes were unfit for service, the proportion of voluntary
enlistment was high. The London Office and Wolvercote Mill also gave
their quota to the service of the Crown.
Those who were obliged to remain behind were not idle. The Oxford
historians at once engaged in the controversy upon the responsibility for
the War; and in September 1914 the Press published _Why We are at War:
Great Britain’s Case_, a series of essays closely and dispassionately
reasoned, and illustrated by official documents including the German
White Book, reproduced exactly from the English translation published in
Berlin for neutral consumption and vitiated by clumsy variations from
the German original. _Why We are at War_ rapidly went through twelve
impressions, and at the instance of Government was translated into six
languages. The profits were handed over to the Belgian Relief Fund. At
the same time was initiated, under the editorship of Mr. H. W. C. Davis,
the series of Oxford Pamphlets on war topics, of which in a short time
more than half a million copies were sold all over the world. Later, when
the public appetite for pamphlets slackened, and the world had leisure
for closer study, the series of _Histories of the Belligerents_ was
founded, which is noticed elsewhere.
‘The Clarendon Press,’ writes Sir Walter Raleigh in his Introduction to
the _Oxford University Roll of Service_, ‘though deprived of the services
of virtually all its men of military age, was active in the production of
books and pamphlets, most of them written by Oxford men, setting forth
the causes and issues of the War—a mine of information, and an armoury of
apologetics.’
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