Читать книгу Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921 - Oxford University Press - Страница 5

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The main building of the Oxford Press, erected 1826-30, consists of three sides of a quadrangle. The two main wings, each of three floors, are still known as the Learned Side and the Bible Side, though their appropriation to Bibles and secular books has long since ceased in fact. On the Learned Side are the hand composing rooms, both the book department and the jobbing department, where some readers and compositors are employed in setting up the official papers of the University, examination papers, and other miscellaneous work, and the more difficult and complicated books produced for the Delegates or other publishers.

The total quantity of type in the Press is estimated at over one million pounds of metal, and includes some 550 different founts of type in some 150 different characters, ranging from the hieroglyphic and the prehistoric ‘Minoan’ (cast to record Sir Arthur Evans’s discoveries), to the phonetic scripts of Sweet and Passy; and including Sanskrit, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Amharic, Coptic, Armenian, Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Sinhalese, Tamil, Gothic, Cyrillic. Here, too, are the famous Fell types acquired by the University about 1667. These are virtually the same as the founts from which were printed the first edition of The Faerie Queene and the First Folio Shakespeare; and their beauty makes them still the envy of printers all the world over. Here compositors are still daily engaged in setting the Oxford Dictionary (with its twenty-one different sizes or characters of type), which has been slowly growing since 1882. One compositor has a record of thirty-eight years’ continuous work on the Dictionary.

In part of the same wing is the Delegates’ Warehouse. Here, and in a number of annexes, including the old Delegates’ School built about 1840, repose the oldest and most durable of the Delegates’ publications. They are stored for the most part in lofty stacks of unfolded sheets, like the piers of a Norman crypt. From these vaults was drawn into the upper air, in 1907, the last copy of Wilkins’s Coptic New Testament, published in 1716, the paper hardly discoloured and the impression still black and brilliant. It is estimated that these warehouses contain some three and a half million copies of about four thousand five hundred distinct books.

Ancient Oak Frames in one of the Composing Rooms

The Upper Composing Room

Monotype Casters

Ink-making

The Old Machine Room

A Perfecting Machine with Self-feeder

The Old Bindery (now a Warehouse)

One of the Warehouses

Of the Bible Side the ground floor is now the press room or Machine Room, which, with its more recent extensions, holds about fifty machines, from the last survivor of the old flat-impression double Platens to the most modern American double-cylinder ‘perfecting’ presses with their automatic ‘feeders’. All kinds of printing are done here, from the small numbers of an oriental book or a Prayer Book in black and red to the largest impression of a Bible printed in sheets containing 320 pages each. The long experience of printing Bibles on thin paper and especially on Oxford India paper has given the Oxford machine-minder an unrivalled dexterity in the nice adjustment required to produce a fine clean effect on paper which will not stand a heavy impression.

As the sheets come from machine they are sent to the Bindery. This was until recently on the floor above the machine room, but has lately been transferred to a larger and more convenient building erected in the old garden behind the Press. The Oxford Bindery deals with most of the Clarendon Press books in cloth bindings, and prides itself upon the fine finish of the cases and gilding of such beautiful books as the Oxford Book of English Verse, as well as on being able to turn out artistic and attractive cloth and paper bindings for books sold at the lowest prices. It still deals with a part only of the books printed under the same roof; but a large expansion is looked for in the near future.

Between the two wings, and across the quadrangle, are two houses once occupied by the late Horace Hart and by Dr. Henry Bradley, now the senior of the three editors of the Oxford Dictionary. The houses became some years ago unfit for habitation from the encroachment of machinery; but one of them was a welcome refuge during the years of war to the staff of the Oxford Local Examinations, who on the 5th of August 1914 were turned out of their office at an hour’s notice to make room for a Base Hospital.

Adjacent to the houses are the fire-proof Plate Room, where some 750 tons of metal are stored, the Stereotype and Electrotype Foundry, and the Monotype Rooms, a department which has lately added to its equipment and bids fair to pass the ancient composing rooms in output. Other departments in and about the old building are the Photographic Room, famous for its collotype printing, the Type Foundry, where Fell type is still cast from the old matrices, and the Ink Factory.

The front of the building on Walton Street consists chiefly of packing rooms, where books are dispatched by rail or road to the City of London and elsewhere, and of offices—those of the Printer to the University on the ground floor and those of the Secretary to the Delegates above. Here are reference libraries of books printed or published by the Press, and records ranging from the oldest Delegates’ minute-book of the seventeenth century to modern type-written correspondence arranged on the ‘vertical’ system of filing.

As the visitor enters the main gate the first object which catches his eye is a plain stone monument on the lawn. There are inscribed the names of the forty-four men of the Oxford Press who gave their lives in the War. Beyond the memorial is the quadrangle, made beautiful by grass and old trees; and from upper windows it is still possible to look over the flats of the Thames Valley and see the sun set behind Wytham Woods.

Corporate feeling has always been strong among the workers at the Press, and though the Delegates and their officers have done what they could to promote it, it is essentially a natural growth. Many of the work-people come of families which have been connected with the Press for generations; and they are proud not only of the old traditions of fine and honest work, but also of the usefulness and scholarly excellence of the books on which their labour is spent. The Press is, in all its parts, conscious at once of its unity and of its relation to the University of which it is an integral part.

THE NAGEL BUILDING

The New Bindery

The Crypt

THE WAR MEMORIAL

This spirit is well shown by the history of the Press Volunteer Fire Brigade, constituted in 1885. The Brigade now numbers thirty-two officers and men, who by regular drills and competitions have made themselves efficient firemen, and able to assist the Oxford City Brigade in case of need. The Press possesses also a branch of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, and first aid can be given at once if any accident happens.

Various Provident and Benevolent Societies exist at the Press, and the principle of co-operation by the employer was recognized for many years before the passing of the National Health Insurance Act. The Hospitals Fund makes substantial yearly contributions to the Radcliffe Infirmary and the Oxford Eye Hospital, and in view of the pressing needs of these institutions the subscription to the Fund has recently been doubled.

The common life naturally finds expression in the organization of recreation of all kinds. There is a Dramatic Society, the records of which go back to 1860; an Instrumental Society, dating from 1852; a Vocal Society, a Minstrel Society, a Piscatorial Society; Athletic, Cricket, Football, and Bowls Clubs, now amalgamated; and, not the least useful nor the least entertaining, the Gardening Association, formed during the war to meet the demand for more potatoes. Such of the men of the Press as were obliged to content themselves with the defence of the home front, responded with enthusiasm in their own gardens and allotments; and the Food Production Exhibition which crowned their efforts in the summer of 1918 became an annual event. In peace, as in war, there is need for all the food we can produce; and the Gardening Association has very wisely not relaxed its efforts.

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.