The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Book industries and trade -- Great Britain; Printing -- Great Britain -- History
We hear no more of Scolar in Oxford after 1518, when he probably left
the city; but his place was taken by Charles Kyrfoth, who issued in
February 1519 a _Compotus manualis ad usum Oxoniensium_, a little
treatise of arithmetic illustrated by wood engravings of the open hand
with values attached to each part. It is a small tract of eight leaves,
and we learn from Dorne’s accounts that its price was one penny. In the
colophon Kyrfoth gives his address, as did Scolar, as St John’s Street,
and as he used the same device of the University Arms, we may conclude
he had taken on Scolar’s business. On the title-page is a large and
curious woodcut divided horizontally into three portions. In the upper
is a row of seven books. In the centre a master in an embroidered robe
and crowned with laurel is seated at a desk, while on either side of
him are scholars taking notes. In the lower part are five men in gowns
holding books. In the text are four diagrams of hands. The only copy
known of this book is in the University Library. Beyond the occurrence
of his name in this colophon we know nothing further of Kyrfoth. He
probably left Oxford soon after the issue of this book, for his name is
not found in the list of inhabitants in the Subsidy Rolls of 1524.
Scolar, as we said above, left Oxford in 1518, but we meet with him
again ten years later; for in 1528 he printed a _Breviary_ for the
use of the Benedictine Monastery at Abingdon, which will be noticed
hereafter.
Between 1527 and 1557 nothing was printed at or for Oxford. The books
printed for John Dorne, described in an earlier lecture, were the last
enterprise of an Oxford publisher. Nor apparently was there any wish to
continue printing, for while Cambridge was careful during the changes
brought about by various acts to preserve her liberties, and when the
act of 1534 against foreign stationers was passed to obtain a special
exemption enabling the University to employ foreign stationers or
printers, Oxford was content to let matters take their course. The roll
of stationers continued unbroken, and here and there an interesting
man, such as Garbrand Harkes, stands out, but there is little of
interest to chronicle before the revival of the press at the end of the
sixteenth century.
While Oxford was credited by many early bibliographers with a book
printed in 1468, which was not really printed until 1478, so many of
the same authorities credited Cambridge with a book printed in 1478
which was not printed at Cambridge at all. The mistakes and confusions
about this book, only finally cleared up by Bradshaw in 1861, form a
curious comedy of errors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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