PREVIOUS EDITIONS
THE decades marking the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries saw publishing undergoing great upheaval. The world inhabited by Horace Hart and F. Howard Collins was marked by a huge surge in technological advances on almost every front—printing, composing, binding, papermaking. This meant that previous procedures for producing books had to be radically readjusted or abandoned altogether, sometimes after decades or even centuries of practice. In addition, the rise of literacy, coupled with an expanding Empire, fuelled an increased demand for books.
At the same time, the English language itself was coming under scrutiny as never before: W. W. Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary of the English Language appeared between 1879 and 1882, Henry Sweet’s New English Grammar was published in 1891; the Oxford English Dictionary (at first named the New English Dictionary) was being compiled amidst great anticipation, providing the foundation for the first edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911). But the language was not being merely recorded, it was being scrutinized and codified as well, with linguistic right and wrong being pursued through the application of scientific principles: George Bernard Shaw proved an enthusiastic proponent of wholesale changes to the language’s orthography, the Fowler brothers’ The King’s English was published in 1906, and the Society for Pure English was first formed in 1913.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States Government Printing Office published its first Style Manual in 1894. Merriam-Webster produced its first Collegiate dictionary in 1898, the University of Chicago Press’s Manual of Style was first published in 1905, and the New Internation Dictionary of the English Language appreared in 1909, followed a decade later by H. L. Mencken’s The American Language.
During this period Oxford University Press was itself expanding at a phenominal rate. Between 1880 and 1885 OUP had produced only twenty-nine new titles; by 1886–91 new titles had increased to fifty-eight, and the total number of titles in print grew from 400 to 800. By 1904 the tally of new titles was 100, by 1909 it had reached 223. During the same time the number of staff at Oxford more than doubled, making the Press the largest employer in Oxford.
Farther afield, the Press was opening up branches all over the globe:
-
OUP New York (1896)
-
OUP Canada (Toronto, 1904)
-
OUP Australia (Melbourne, 1908)
-
OUP India (Bombay, 1912)
-
OUP South Africa (Cape Town, 1915)
Then, as now, such a far-flung institution naturally caused some confusion in the public mind. Inquiries from around the world were sometimes addressed to New York rather than Oxford, and Horace Hart, as Controller of the University Press, treasured an overseas envelope addressing him as The Controller of the Universe.
Both Collins/ODWE and Hart's Rules kept pace with these
changes through frequently updated and expanded editions—in the case
of Hart, sometimes two a year. In one preface (1914) Hart remarks
on the phenomenon of new words that appear unexpectedly ‘like planets’,
and must then be incorporated into the pages of a subsequent edition.
(He offers examples of airman, airship, sabotage,
seaplane, stepney-wheel, and syndicalism, ‘which
will occur to every newspaper reader’.)
Every edition of Collins/ODWE and Hart's Rules has had at least one preface or editor’s note; however, almost from the very first there has been a limit to how many cumulative prefaces any given edition has included. (Given that Hart’s Rules ran to thirty-nine editions, this is hardly surprising.) Since these represent an important—and in many cases unique—source of information on how and why these influential editions evolved over time, they are well worth making available.
The first link below offers general information about the history of the Oxford Guide to Style, with a clickable list of editions offering texts of introductions, editors’ notes, and prefaces from Hart’s Rules, as well as images from notable editions. The second link does the same for the history of the Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors, with a clickable list of editions from Collins’s Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary.
What follows is a collection
of images of Oxford University Press in Oxford. Apart from the first,
all show the Press as it was as it was at the turn of the last century,
in Hart’s and Collins’s day. Click on a link for a pop-up
window of the image described:
The front façade of Oxford University Press’s new Walton Street home, c.1840 (46k).
For more on Horace Hart click here; to read a description of his typical working day, click here. For a chronology of the Press during the period 1850–1925, click here. Click on the ‘Back’ button on your browser or on the ‘Previous Editions’ link to return to this page.
|
HOME
PAGE0000ABOUT
ODWE0000ABOUT
OGS0000PREVIOUS
EDITIONS |
Webmaster:
R. M. Ritter © 2000-2002, Revised: 22/03/200200000000
Copyright
& Disclaimer (pop-up window)