Cambridge University Press
is the publishing business of the
University of
Cambridge
. Granted a Royal
Letters Patent by
Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's
oldest continually operating book publisher.
Cambridge
is both an academic and educational publishing house, with a regional structure
operating in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); the
Americas; and Asia-Pacific.
Headquartered in Cambridge UK, the company
has warehousing centres in Cambridge, New
York
, Melbourne
, Madrid
, Cape Town
, São
Paulo
, New
Delhi
, Tokyo
and Singapore
, with offices and agents in many other
countries. Its publishing output includes major ELT courses;
tertiary
textbooks and
monographs; scientific and medical reference;
professional lists in
law,
management and
engineering; educational coursebooks; and
e-learning materials for schools via the
Cambridge-
Hitachi joint venture. Its
publications are aimed at markets worldwide, at all levels from
primary school to postgraduate and professional. The Press also
publishes
Bibles, prayer books, and 240
academic journals.
History
The Cambridge University Press is both the oldest publishing house
in the world and the oldest university press.
It originated from
Letters Patent (similar to a royal charter) granted to the University of
Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534,
and has been producing books continuously since the first
University Press book was printed in 1584. Cambridge is one
of the two
privileged presses
(the other being
Oxford
University Press). Authors published by Cambridge have included
John Milton,
William Harvey,
Isaac
Newton,
Bertrand Russell, and
Stephen Hawking.
University
printing did not actually begin
in Cambridge until the first practising University Printer, Thomas
Thomas, had been appointed in 1583, nearly fifty years after the
grant of the Letters Patent. He set up a printing house on the site
of what became the Senate-House lawn – a few yards from where the
Press’s
bookshop now stands. In those days,
the Stationers’ Company in London jealously guarded its monopoly of
printing, which partly explains the delay between the date of the
University’s Letters Patent and the printing of the first
book.
In 1591, Thomas’s successor, John Legate, printed the first
Cambridge Bible, an octavo edition of the popular
Geneva Bible. The London Stationers objected
strenuously, claiming that they had the monopoly on Bible printing.
The University’s response was to point out the provision in its
charter to print ‘all manner of books’. Thus began the Press’s
tradition of publishing the Bible, a tradition that has endured for
over four centuries, beginning with the Geneva Bible, and
continuing with the
Authorized
Version, the
Revised Version,
the
New English Bible and the
Revised English Bible. The
restrictions and compromises forced upon Cambridge by the dispute
with the London Stationers did not really come to an end until the
scholar
Richard Bentley was given
the power to set up a ‘new-style press’ in 1696. It was in
Bentley’s time, in 1697, that a body of senior scholars (‘the
Curators’, known from 1733 as ‘the Syndics’) was appointed to be
responsible to the University for the Press’s affairs. The Press
Syndicate’s publishing committee still meets regularly (eighteen
times a year), and its role still includes the review and approval
of the Press’s planned output. John Baskerville became University
Printer in the mid-eighteenth century. Baskerville’s concern was
the production of the finest possible books using his own
type-design and printing techniques.
Of this edition, Baskerville wrote ‘
The importance of the work
demands all my attention; not only for my own (eternal) reputation;
but (I hope) also to convince the world, that the University in the
honour done me has not intirely misplaced their favours.’
Caxton would have found nothing to surprise him if he had walked
into the Press’s printing house in the eighteenth century: all the
type was still being set by hand; wooden presses, capable of
producing only 1,000 sheets a day at best, were still in use; and
books were still being individually bound by hand. A technological
breakthrough was badly needed, and it came when Lord Stanhope
perfected the making of stereotype plates. This involved making a
mould of the whole surface of a page of type and then casting
plates from that mould. The Press was the first to use this
technique, and in 1805 produced the technically successful and
much-reprinted Cambridge Stereotype Bible.
By the 1850s the Press was using steam-powered machine presses,
employing two to three hundred people, and occupying several
buildings in the Silver Street and Mill Lane area, including the
one that the Press still occupies, is the Pitt Building (1833),
which was built specifically for the Press and in honour of
William Pitt the Younger.
Under the stewardship of C. J. Clay, who was University Printer
from 1854 to 1882, the Press increased the size and scale of its
academic and educational publishing operation. An important factor
in this increase was the inauguration of its list of schoolbooks
(including what came to be known as the ‘Pitt Press Series’).
During Clay’s administration, the Press also undertook a sizeable
co-publishing venture with Oxford: the Revised Version of the
Bible, which was begun in 1870 and completed in 1885. It was in
this period as well that the Syndics of the Press turned down what
later became the
Oxford
English Dictionary -- a proposal for which was brought to
Cambridge by
James
Murray before he turned to Oxford.
The appointment of R. T. Wright as Secretary of the Press Syndicate
in 1892 marked the beginning of the Press’s development as a modern
publishing business with a clearly defined editorial policy and
administrative structure. It was Wright (with two great historians,
Lord Acton and
F. W. Maitland) who devised the plan for one of the
most distinctive Cambridge contributions to publishing – the
Cambridge Histories.
The Cambridge Modern History was completed in 1912. Nine years
later the Press issued the first volumes of the freshly-edited
complete works of
Shakespeare, a project
of nearly equal scope that was not finished until 1966. The Press’s
list in science and mathematics began to thrive, with men of the
stature of
Albert Einstein and
Ernest Rutherford subsequently
becoming Press authors. The Press’s impressive contribution to
journal publishing began in 1893, and today it publishes close to
250 journals.
In 1992
the Press opened its own bookshop at 1 Trinity
Street
, in the centre of Cambridge. Books have been
sold continuously on this site since at least 1581, perhaps even as
early as 1505, making it the oldest known bookshop site in Britain.
The £1.25m worth of Press publications sold each year through this
bookshop is a small proportion of CUP's global sales, and one of
the most exciting developments of the past fifty years has been the
expansion of its international presence. With branches, offices and
agents throughout the world, the Press today is able to draw on a
remarkable range of authors (currently around 33,000 from 120
different countries) and to market and distribute material (both
print and electronic) to readers everywhere. Its 1,800 staff in
sixty offices service an inventory of 34,000 in-print titles,
growing at a rate of 2,800 new ISBNs per year, and a stockholding
of 16m units in nine warehouses around the world.
Canto
CUP has a division called 'Canto' that offers economical reprints
of their more popular books in a (often smaller)
paperback. The editions state, "Canto is a
paperback imprint which offers a broad range of titles, both
classic and more recent, representing some of the best and most
enjoyable of Cambridge publishing."
Controversies
In 2007, controversy arose over CUP's decision to destroy all
remaining copies of its 2006 book,
Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the
Islamic World, by Burr and Collins, as part of the
settlement of a lawsuit brought by Saudi billionaire
Khalid bin Mahfouz.
Within hours, Alms
for Jihad became one of the 100 most sought after titles on
Amazon.Com and eBay
in the United
States
. CUP sent a letter to libraries asking them
to remove copies from circulation. CUP subsequently sent out copies
of an "errata" sheet. The
American Library Association
issued a recommendation to libraries still holding
Alms for
Jihad: "Given the intense interest in the book, and the desire
of readers to learn about the controversy first hand, we recommend
that U.S. libraries keep the book available for their users." The
publisher's decision did not have the support of the book's authors
and was criticised by some who claimed it was incompatible with
freedom of speech and with freedom of the press and that it
indicated that English libel laws were excessively strict. In a
New York Times Book
Review (7 October 2007),
United States
Congressman Frank R. Wolf described Cambridge's settlement as
"basically a book burning."
Notes
- History of the Bookshop, Cambridge
University Press.
- theBookseller.com
- A University Press Stands Up — and Wins : Inside
Higher Ed : Higher Education's Source for News, and Views and
Jobs
References
- Anonymous; The Student's Guide to the University of
Cambridge. Third Edition, Revised and Partly
Re-written; Deighton Bell, 1874 (reissued by Cambridge
University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00491-6)
- Anonymous; War Record of the Cambridge University Press
1914-1919; Cambridge University Press, 1920; (reissued by
Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00294-3)
- McKitterick, David; A History of Cambridge University
Press, 3 volumes; Cambridge University Press. 1992-2004; ISBN
978-0-521-30801-4, ISBN 978-0-521-30802-1 & ISBN
978-0-521-30803-8
- The Press' reply to the Alms for Jihad Controversy:
http://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/43397-why-cup-acted-responsibly.html
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