Monday, October 21, 2013

Oxford: At the Clarendon Press

"One may say that there is no adequate reason why a uni­versity press should confine itself to works of scholarship which have very little chance of paying for themselves; and that, for instance, the Oxford University Press publishes mis­cellaneous books. But not all books bearing the Oxford Uni­versity Press imprint are of necessity scholarly books. Re­sponsibility for scholarship, format, etc., is indicated by the special imprint, "Oxford: At the Clarendon Press." This has a special meaning, which is that books like Thompson's Greek and Latin Paleography, McKerrow's Introduction to
Bibliography
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or Murray's Aeschylus, The Creator of Tragedy are published by the authority of the University, and the con­tents as well as form are certified by the University through the delegates of the Press. In other words, the imprint "Ox­ford: At the Clarendon Press" is the hall-mark of scholarly work. The imprint "Oxford University Press" does not imply that the books bearing it have necessarily a relation to the University delegates. It is the imprint of a publishing house of very high repute whose English publications are printed at the University Press, Oxford. At the Cambridge Univer­sity Press there is not the same division of responsibility as at Oxford. Every book published by the Cambridge Press has the approval of the syndics as to its contents."
                                                    Daniel Berkeley Updike
From the essay:

"American University Presses" in
"Some Aspects of Printing Old and New"
Publisher William Edwin Rudge, New Haven 1941
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